Don Brash and other white, male conservatives speaking in the mainstream media, dislike the sound of te reo on the radio, even during the annual Maori Language Week, celebrating a national and international treasure for just seven days a year. Just like many of the birds whose calls ring out on RNZ National’s Morning Report, (not rejected by Don Brash), Maori language is endemic to this country, found nowhere else and is being brought back from the brink of extinction.

But interviewed by Kim Hill on RNZ on Saturday 1 December, Dr Brash says the sound of te reo on Morning Report profoundly irritates him, and he’s sick of the language being rammed down his throat. People are ‘having te reo foisted upon them’, and ‘people who don’t understand it, shouldn’t have to listen to it’. Kim Hill correctly pointed out that the same could be said about the financial reports, often not understood; or for me, sports updates with obscure rules and scoring protocols that I have no idea of, but hope to learn through exposure. Instead of the dumbing down of diversity that occurs through commercial radio, the public sector broadcasting of our indigenous language offers the opportunity to learn more, and widen our horizons, to keep something precious alive, to build on national and Maori culture and identity, to add more to our personal lexicons and range of expressions. Public celebrations of te reo offer valuable links to the past and a distinctive cosmology and way of describing the world.

Mr Brash however, complained that Maori language doesn’t have economic value or utility, and displaces more important learning in schools. He bemoans the fact that it’s taught in kindergartens and schools even when there are ‘no brown faces’ for miles, as if our national language should only apply to people with brown skin.

But Dr Brash has different ideas of what it means to be a New Zealander, and what are things of value, than many other New Zealanders. Fortunately, according to successive NZ Attitude Surveys, over time there’s increasing support for te reo use in public life, and growing agreement that it can be a beautiful thing to listen to. There are indications of a growing majority of kiwis supporting the use of te reo though they may be a somewhat passive force – they don’t so much make the headlines or the airwaves as provocateurs like Don Brash, though his interview with Kim Hill makes many of us wonder why he gets any air time at all.

Don Brash and others speak with irreverence, disrespect, disregard and even ignorance of the Charter of RNZ authorising the use of te reo, the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteeing tino rangatiratanga – self determination for Maori, UN Human Rights, and rights of the Child clauses recognising the importance of expression in indigenous tongues. Brash et al show closed mindedness, bigotry, a hangover of colonial attitudes, and inconsistent logic in their intolerance of the use of our native language. Brash said he ‘doesn’t like it and can’t understand it’ so it shouldn’t be used on a public broadcasting station, but he is ok about some words where they enhance English by offering broader meanings or are already well known. He has no humility in thinking standards of language use should be determined by the existing words he already knows, as if the limits of his knowledge should be arbiter of language overall.

Don Brash also overlooked the historical and contemporary diversity, and complexity of New Zealand, saying ‘New Zealand values are British values’, and that a lot of socio-economic deprivation among Maori is because they ‘don’t speak English properly’.

It’s unfortunately true that a high number of people in prison, are illiterate, and sometimes not fluent in written and spoken English. It’s a fact of life, everywhere that power in society is partly secured through the tyranny of the articulate. Whoever controls the rules of engagement, the language and codes used, the verbal and written system of exchange, includes some sectors of society, and excludes others. Don Brash says English is ‘a passport to access and understanding around the world’. Ultimately the dominant language in society can be a tool of colonialism and oppression, an instrument of power, and that’s a prerogative that people like Don Brash seek to preserve. His is a world view that says ‘speak my language or stay silent for your words otherwise have no value’.

But how well does English serve us, when indigenous people are marginalised and alienated from the system because it’s not their ‘first language’. How well does English serve us when ‘failure to engage’ increases the likelihood of prison. Don Brash says all New Zealanders should have equal political rights, but that idea fails at the first hurdle when access to the tools of discourse that recognise those political rights are denied to some and advantage others. English language serves those best who already speak it, and Don Brash et al, deny alternatives as legitimate medium of communication in our bi-cultural national setting.

As Kim Hill, interviewing Don Brash, observed, Maori had to listen to and learn English at the mercy of the colonising British forces, and by opposing the use of te reo by our state broadcaster, Don Brash and people like him seek to continue that linguistic imperialism, control and oppression. 328,000,000 people around the world are native English language speakers, and an estimated billion more are learning it as a second language. English spoken around the world as the linguistic currency of communication and commerce, (“Globish”), is not under threat, but indigenous languages are, and if we can’t celebrate and promote actual endangered languages in the specific countries where they are originally found, then where?

Don Brash’s Hobson’s Pledge lobby group, proposes ‘an end to Maori privilege’ though there’s little evidence of ‘Maori privilege’ in structures or outcomes for our indigenous people. They’re over-represented in negative social, economic and health indicators, though Don Brash makes out as if that’s because they can’t speak English properly, rather than from persistent, structural economic inequalities symptomatic of colonialism, as much as a personal ‘failure to learn’. Don Brash assumes the right to object to the public celebration of our country’s ‘mother tongue’ ‘because he doesn’t like it’ (he could just turn off the radio) and exposes himself as a relic of our colonial past with no place in a tolerant and diverse future that celebrates its indigenous treasures.

This week an unsolicited EziBuy brochure turned up in my mail box. It was unnecessarily wrapped in plastic, and unappealing in its styles, utopian in its settings, unrealistic in its prices. But there was a more insidious underlying issue that took a while to become apparent. Of the 117 pages, including front and back, there were only about five that contained any images of dark skinned women.

When I observed on that great stewing cauldron of opinion, Facebook, that there were virtually no ‘women of colour’ in EziBuy pages, I was told I was homogenising women. (Sorry to every one of you!). I was told the descriptor ‘of colour’ was an ‘Americanism’; I should have referred to Indian, African-American, Maori, Pacifica…. While labels matter, racism itself is of broader concern.

The absence in EziBuy of pictures of Maori, Asian, Pacific, Middle Eastern women of all ethnicities and nations, and other women who make up the diversity of New Zealand life, meant that women different from a ‘white’ homogenous ‘standard’ were made subject to ‘symbolic annihilation’. They were made invisible, denormalised, diminished. And given the role the media of all types plays in shaping views of ourselves and the world, EziBuy failed to reflect, speak to, or even acknowledge the beautiful diversity of New Zealand women. That every woman in the catalogue met a rare and unrealistic standard of ‘perfect’ teeth, hair and height, was a bad enough signal to real women everywhere, but the absence of real, diverse New Zealand women, said only white women (of certain Aryan characteristics) are and can be, beautiful and suitable for wearing EziBuy clothes.

In the long Facebook discussion that followed, I was told that ‘we should just get over it and stop whining and making politics out of everything’. “We should all be one people”. Someone I’m fond of said I should just face up to the fact that we are white New Zealand.
I double checked New Zealand’s demographic figures, which confirmed we are definitely not ‘white NZ’, but are 14+% Maori, 11% Asian, 7+% Pacifica, plus other ethnicities, and just 72% are ‘European New Zealanders’. Certainly when I walk down an Auckland street it looks a lot like a mixed modern city to me. And all the richer for it. Though no wonder attitudes of European entitlement and privilege prevail. It was only in the 1970s that New Zealand stopped selecting immigrants just based on their European descent, and instead accepted them on more equal basis of skills, financial capacity and family links. We’re dealing with a culture that’s still striving to retain its dominion.

The recognition and denigration of others based on physical characteristics is said to stem from unity of tribal group bonds and fear of those who are different. Racist stereotypes have long been used in this country to justify a settler society and colonisation. Claims that we should have ‘one (white) law for all’, and be ‘one’ New Zealand, assume a systematic Euro-centric superiority, dishonour the Treaty, insult bi-culturalism and thwart opportunities for recognition and celebration of indigeneity, and diversity.

Diversity and different skin colour and dress in our communities is an obvious sign of social change, and those with established privilege or status, even if they can’t see it themselves, will feel threatened by change and by a society they perceive as filled with others. There’s casual racism and every day bias against Indian shopkeepers and bus drivers, women in headscarves, Maori, ‘Asian homeowners’. Fourth generation kiwis of Chinese descent get told to go back where they came from. A whole range of derogatory terms are used to describe good, hard working kiwis who, if they had the same skin colour as the dominant paradigm and its narratives, wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. In many cases, prejudice works against people just because of the colour of their skin not because of the fact that they’re foreigners though – there’s less bias against immigrants from England, Australia or Europe, than there is against indigenous Maori and Pacific Islanders, or people of ‘different’ colour.

That’s because colour is a proxy for political inequality – power imbalance. Who needs a brand or a label to highlight the target of your opposition when simple pigment will do. Racism is, according to sociologists, ‘a political construct, primarily a manifestation of unequal power between groups’. It’s the machinery of an ‘ethnocentric paradigm’ which maintains those unequal power relations.

The absence of ethnically diverse women in fashion magazines as part of media bias, ‘defines the contours of society’, shapes our understanding of the world, how we see ourselves, how we are seen, and helps create ‘social identities and realities’. It’s a form of ‘racial framing’.

So while some said ‘it’s just a magazine selling clothes, don’t read too much into it’, the racism problem goes further than just in magazines. There’s evidence from the Human Rights Commission that racism is getting worse though most victims of racism ‘suffer in silence’ according to Commissioner Susan Devoy. And racism works on all fronts, there’s internal, interpersonal, institutional, and societal racism affecting individual’s health, wellbeing, experiences and life chances in the workplace, public sector and in the provision of goods and services. It’s been seen in popular culture from ‘My Kitchen Rules’, to the NZ Music Awards. It’s expressed in differential access to health care, education, rental accommodation, and in unequal treatment through the criminal justice system.

It was pointed out that EziBuy is an Australian owned company, as if that explains the homogenous white women filling their pages. It certainly doesn’t excuse it. But given New Zealand and Australia are richly ethnically diverse and are both target audiences for the magazine and the company’s clothes, it would be wholly appropriate to include images that represent the real women of those countries. In fact, EziBuy started as a New Zealand company, before it was bought by Coles and then Woolworths, so it has had quite an opportunity to reflect the make-up of its country of origin. Their head office is in Parnell.

There were no pictures of models with t-shirts saying ‘I’m racist on the inside’ in the EziBuy magazine, to adopt an angle from the Human Rights Commission’s ‘Give nothing to racism’ campaign fronted by Taika Waititi. And even when we think we’re (one) colour blind, we’re seeing the world from a particular lens. The concerning thing about the EziBuy catalogue was that it presented a (series of) false realities as if they were ideals. Though there was no ‘I’m racist on the inside’ label on the cover, its pictures spoke a thousand words, if only you read between the lines.

It’s like politicians have suddenly been given permission to call out capitalism for its injustices, excesses, and inequalities. Winston Peters said what others had been scared to say, that capitalism has created many who see it as foe rather than friend, and they’re ‘not all wrong’. He criticised ‘irresponsible’ neo-liberal capitalism which has changed the character and quality of our country, mostly ‘for the worse’. He argued that capitalism must regain its responsible, humane face, I guess to prevent political crisis when the anticipated economic crisis occurs. In choosing Labour as a coalition partner over National, New Zealand First ‘rejected the status quo in favour of real change’. But how much can improving the ‘face’ of capitalism, solve the more fundamental problems of the system itself. And how radical are the new government’s reform policies anyway? Media commentators have had a field day speculating on the degree and impact of the new Government’s reformist agenda in the midst of this rare political opportunity.

Oliver Chan in his article ‘Keynsianism for a new New Zealand’, calls the government’s change programme ‘aspirational socialism’. He said Labour and New Zealand First are the ‘bipartisan gravediggers for neoliberalism’. Media across the ditch and farmers in Morrinsville mistook Labour’s policies for communism. Duncan Garner said the new government with its regional development policies, support for rail, cannabis reform and free education, would be a ‘revolutionary force’.

Others such as Bryan Gould and Bryce Edwards say the election of a progressive, reformist, energetic and active government, reflects a global zeitgeist, and has captured and channelled anti-establishment politics in a more positive way than in, for example, the election of Trump in the United States. Democratic politics and MMP have worked well, in harnessing political opposition to the machinery of the status quo to affect legitimate and peaceful ways of mediating controlled change. Political outcomes are highly contingent, and unfortunately change has been rather slow to get here and a lot of damage has been done in the meantime.

In support of Jacinda Ardern, Wayne Mapp, former National MP, said the new government won’t really be radical. -After all it will continue to work within the current national and international economic frameworks, surpluses will be maintained, budget responsibility will be upheld. Spending will be transparent and accountable. There will be no dismantling of the capitalist system at the hands of this government, despite criticisms of some of its effects. But what will be most important, said Wayne Mapp, is the signal it sends in terms of ‘atmospherics’. That will ‘really mean something.”. “It’s a chance to remake the narrative of the country, …the way we portray ourselves to the world”. Indeed, our election of a young woman as Prime Minister has already done that.

Winston’s criticism of capitalism in the speech where he announced his choice of coalition partner, did a lot to position his party, and the new Government he enabled, more to the symbolic left of centre than had been present for a long time.

On the tv programme The Nation, the next day, Jacinda Ardern, in one of her ‘most left wing speeches’ according to Bryce Edwards, answered Lisa Owen’s inquiry as to whether she agreed with Winston’s prognosis. She said while the party campaigned on addressing capitalism’s failures by ‘tweaking’ the system, her view was that capitalism had been a blatant failure when measured by child poverty. And that “If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure. What else could you describe it as?”

It’s true that capitalism has failed low income earners who live in poverty at one of the highest rates in the developed world, and indeed, all over the world. It’s failed the children who live in those low-income homes. It’s failed the homeless. But capitalism has also failed our rivers, our oceans, biodiversity, future generations and our atmosphere.

But with Winston’s proclamation, and Jacinda’s elucidation, all of a sudden it’s ok to admit the Emperor’s clothes are a poor fit, that they fail to cover the regime’s inadequacies, its indecencies, the harms it causes in private.

We’re on a roll, with more in the new government’s due criticism of capitalism. This week, Trade Minister David Parker said that the proposed ban on non-resident foreign investors buying existing houses in New Zealand, was to address the pressures of the ‘excesses of capitalism’ in the form of the overseas 1% who can currently come in to this country and buy houses, driving up prices for good kiwi buyers.

The policy itself has been criticised as an ill directed, (xenophobic) dog whistle against perceived ‘others’, which may not make much difference to house price inflation, because it’s not matched with a capital gains tax, doesn’t apply to new builds, doesn’t apply to businesses, and the focus of the policy only creates between 5 and 20% of housing demand anyway.

While speculative investment from foreign buyers might be causing a part of the house price inflation, it’s clear that most of the demand is driven by domestic investors and speculators, our own 1% who remain unaffected by this policy. There are clearly thousands of kiwis who had the good luck of access to a low but growing housing market and cheap interest rates to buy a collection of houses, all rented out, with interest and costs claimed against tax. Kiwis who responded to market signals and bought two, three, twenty houses to guard against their old age penury, but without regard to the housing insecurity of others. Criticisms of the global 1% buying existing houses in New Zealand, and current and planned policy settings, do nothing to address the impacts of our own 1%. After all, this sector of the community vote, and have a lot at stake, and we saw in the polls how the prospect of a capital gains tax could make all the difference to the outcome of the election. Despite the enthusiasm for a compassionate and empathetic governance style, self-interest and personal economic security for those who can get it, is a pretty strong force, even if it cuts others including the next generation, out of the market.

Can capitalism really deliver solutions to the problems it creates anyway, without causing worse injustice, if not here, then somewhere else in the world as our local achievements are offset by costs in some poorer country? Joven’s paradox says we can’t use green growth to build our way out of environmental damage, without creating more. We can’t grow ourselves out of finite resources and inequality using the model that created these problems in the first place. And with a duly expected economic slow-down or collapse, aren’t we just trying to secure the safety net and batten the hatches for more of what, for many, is an already bumpy ride? In our welfare system, accommodation allowance, working for families, planned heating subsidies, are we not just supporting the shortcomings of capitalism? Instead of regulated rent control, and companies paying decent wages, the government picks up the pieces. As usual isn’t the democratic system just effectively, co-opting real revolutionary energy and hitching it to the prevailing political order, ameliorating the worst effects of capitalism but doing little to change its wider instability or injustice?

Therein lies the dilemma. We New Zealanders, have responded to the capital incentives of a dynamic housing environment, but reject perceptions of ‘foreign’ involvement in the same. ‘Multiple home ownership should be the purview of kiwis, not ‘foreigners’.’ When it comes to the Trans Pacific Partnership, we all want access to immediate supply of the best – and worst- of the world’s consumer goods and commodities – exotic food, cheap clothing, cars, tvs, the latest international tech gadgets, international education, travel, …but we resent the damage from this global market on our own employment, investments and environment. We want international markets to deliver goods for our own consumption, and to buy our goods, but we resent our loss of jobs, the saturation of our markets and overseas investment in our own country at the same time. Just like capitalism privatises the benefits and socialises the costs, as consumers, we’re globalist when it comes to benefits and protectionist when it comes to costs.

Labour says it plans to ban foreign owners of new homes under the Overseas Investment Act to pre-empt the Trans Pacific Partnership rules, because it will otherwise lose the opportunity to ban foreign home ownership forever. That should be a concern in itself. Some critics think, however, that’s a red herring because of greater concern is the Investor States Disputes Settlement clause which undermines states’ sovereign rights to make policies in the interests of public or environmental health, at risk of being sued by corporations. Jacinda Ardern admits the ISDS provisions may not be changed.

But they’re hopeful days with the new government. With a three-party solution and the broad pick and mix of policies, there’s something there for every-one. In terms of ‘atmospherics’, there must be something in the air because most of us on the left are feeling pretty high. And while this may not be the radical root and branch revolutionary reform that capitalism really needs, a pulling out of a pretty but noxious vine, a good prune will always help to manage better growth and form. That’s in the interests of capital, and the community and keeps the vine bearing fruit and keeps the force alive while we strive for even better.

War is great for business. About $1.68 trillion worth of business globally as of 2015. Defence market reports say global tension and conflict will drive ongoing defence spending, “leading to global market opportunities for exporters”. Even here in NZ, our comparatively small defence budget is increasing, and NZ based military technology manufacturers are poised to capitalise on market opportunities generated by instability, superpower aggression and conflict around the world.

Already the NZ defence industry generates about $60million per annum, and employs about 2500 people. The defence force itself has the massive budget of $3,261 million for the 2017/18 year with an almost $100 million funding boost in this year’s budget, and an additional $406million over four years for increased operational expenses, and $576million for capital projects. That’s a lot of money in both public and private sector involvement in the potential creation and dissemination of instruments of death.

Business opportunities provided by a thriving arms market are promoted by the NZ Defence Industry Forum which held its annual conference in Wellington this week. The Defence Industry Forum (NZDIA) facilitates discussions between defence suppliers and defence agency buyers, from here and around the world. The NZDIA brief is to “identify niche markets worldwide and optimise foreign exchange returns on assets of its members, …with a focus on gaining and maximising onshore and offshore defence contracts”. According to one of the referees on their website, ‘they’re one of the most effective industry forums in New Zealand”, reflected in the Government’s budget increases perhaps. But beyond the opportunities of expanding domestic military expenditure, New Zealand companies are benefitting from the global death trade. With the military as agents of state sanctioned violence, companies supporting the arms trade here and abroad, are war profiteers, complicit in a culture of violence and oppression.

And it seems that industry is booming. The Defence Industry Association annual conference was attended by around 500 delegates and 150 organisations. The conference is usually sponsored at least in part, by one of the world’s largest (worst?) arms manufacturers, Lockheed Martin. Representatives of other major weapons companies also attend. But smaller domestic companies who manufacture mortar firing devices, combat training systems, missile guidance technology, weapons and ammunition, transport, procurement and logistics systems, cyber security and military electronics are all there. We’ve got ‘arms dealers on our doorstep’. It’s an opportunity for these industries to buy, sell and lobby for ‘more weapons of war’. War in itself helps their trade.

Intolerant conservatives in NZ were appalled at the behaviour of protestors who sought to blockade, interrupt and disrupt the Defence Industry conference. In online comments, protestors were called ‘street thugs’, ‘rent a mob’, ‘the dregs of society’. They should “get a job, get a life, and if they want change, they should get elected”. Ironically Chloe Swarbrick, newly elected Green MP attended the conference blockade, as did the recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize winner Thomas Nash, recognised for his opposition to nuclear weapons. And many of the protestors were working people who considered the issue of NZ’s involvement in the death trade sufficiently morally important that they used annual leave so they could attend.

Among the protestors was ‘Uncle Scam’ dressed in stars and stripes, wearing a ‘wanted for war crimes’ sign, and carrying another asking conference attendees ‘is it ok when it’s not your family?’ with pictures of falling bombs. There were clowns, men, women and children, people carrying flowers, and a celebratory ‘give peace a dance’ event.

Peaceful protestors blockading the route for delegates to the conference, were manhandled, apparently brutalised, and some people were insulted and injured by the police. Protestors say the police used inappropriate force, which the police deny, saying ‘they were extremely disappointed with the behaviour of protestors”, but protestors said if they’d acted the way the police did, they would have been arrested. The police have the long arm and the upper hand of the law.

Protestors questioned why the police were enforcing security at an industry event, which should be paying for its own security, and the cops were acting as ‘lap dogs to big business’. It’s a bizarre paradox; Wars have been fought to ‘preserve democratic freedoms’ which are suppressed by the police because those same freedoms are used to question the trades of war.

Some of the ‘appalling behaviour’ exhibited by protestors included spitting on conference delegates, and one online contributor suggested even ‘rebelling against the police is despicable behaviour’. It’s a sick world where war mongers and military equipment mercenaries are protected by the state, and those who bear witness and raise awareness of militarism, where the purpose is to kill, are condemned. Non-violent direct action is seen through this lens as a greater crime than direct and violent action through organised military means. In this context, even violent action would be appropriate to stop the dogs of war, but society condemns those who stand for peace, not force, as well as those who would use force to stop it.

Once again the power of the dollar trumps moral questions of the trade in murderous weapons. Turning a blind eye to the proliferation of the tools of war, and their production here in New Zealand, is the same as the American blind spot to gun related harm, but on bigger scale. Edmund Burke said, ‘all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’. And Malcolm X said, ‘if you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” This week, righteous and honourable men and women spoke truth to power, and stood against evil that’s institutionalised in the state, and such a cultural norm that the non-violent protestors were condemned more than the purveyors of war.

Mahatma Ghandi said the true measure of any society is its treatment of its most vulnerable members. Others say inequality is the measure of fairness in society. The massive levels of inequality in modern capitalist societies reflect badly by any measure. Egalitarian New Zealand is a myth.

Poverty was talked up as a big issue in the recent general election, and rightfully so. UNICEF say almost 300,000 New Zealand children are living under the poverty line. Many of them are from families where one or both parents are in employment. Those not employed are forced to literally live on the breadline.

Last week the media featured the story of Lynlie Beazley, “the face of poverty in New Zealand”. After her fixed costs are met, Lynlie has just $22 a week to live on. That’s enough to buy her two bottles of milk, two loaves of bread and a tray of eggs to last the week. Otherwise she relies on food parcels from the Salvation Army, smokes other people’s discarded cigarette butts, wears discarded clothes, the shoes of the homeless. It’s been two years since Lynlie has been able to afford fresh fruit. Lynlie was one of more than 10,555 individuals the Salvation Army supported with food parcels between April and June this year alone.

Researchers such as Phillipa Howden-Chapman, Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago, say the most pronounced indicator of social inequality in NZ is growth in income inequality. Income disparity is driving disparity in social and health outcomes. People living in poverty have reduced life expectancy, fewer life chances than their wealthier counterparts, they’re forced to scrimp on food, on trips to the doctor, they’re more likely to live in cold and damp housing. According to Treasury 30% of households with dependents earned less than the living wage, currently $20.20ph. When the minimum wage is $15.75 an hour, or $630 for a 40 hour working week, and not enough to live on, poverty is regulated for by the state.

But if Lynlie Beazley, an unemployed, brown woman, is the face of poverty, at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum is Theo Spierings, an icon of obscene earning. As CEO of NZ dairy giant Fonterra, Mr Spierings this year has received a 78.5% pay rise on last year, bringing his total remuneration package to $8.3million. That’s $16,000 per week or more than $1 a second. He gets paid 200 times the pay of Fonterra’s lowest paid workers.

Spierings’ astronomical pay and pay rise leads to questions about value for money for the cooperative dairy company’s shareholders, as well as the nature of income inequality in modern capitalist society. Dr Lynley Tulloch observes that Spierings’ “humungous salary seems incongruous with recent stories of farmer debt, suicide and struggle”. Fonterra’s full year profit was $100million less than in the previous year, in 2015 more than 700 staff were laid off, butter prices rose 11% in August this year to a record high of $5.39 a block. Basic Fonterra commodities like milk and butter are unaffordable to the working and unemployed poor. Agricultural debt has risen over $60billion in the last few years, externalised costs on receiving environments and animal welfare go unmet. How sustainable can Spierings’ pay rate be?

But while Spierings’ pay is incongruous with the plaintive cries we hear about ‘poor farmers’ any time there’s a low global dairy return, and even though he is the highest paid CEO in the country, the scale of his pay isn’t out of keeping with other corporate CEOs here and overseas.

The average pay for CEOs in NZ is over $1million. The 2015 average NZ worker’s income on the other hand, was $57,117. Five other Fonterra staff ‘earn’ more than $1million per annum. 200 earn $500,000 to a $1million. SkyCity’s Chief Executive Nigel Morrison earns $6.4million a year. Fletcher Buildings’ Mark Adamson took home $4.7million until he was unusually sacked for poor performance. The Chief Executive of The Warehouse, Nick Grayson earns $1.4million per annum in his standard salary, and took home an addition of $700,000. Grayson makes more in two weeks what a shop floor worker makes in a year.

There’s no evidence that these CEOs are worth that much more than the floor level workers. I’ve never understood why people doing the worst jobs are also paid the lowest wages. The cleaner’s role is no less important than the manager’s. Economist Max Rashbrooke observes that CEOs are paid considerably more than they were a generation ago, but it’s not proven that they’re more effective. According to international studies, there’s no link between high pay for CEOs and company performance. Professor Tim Hazeldine of the University of Auckland, agrees that growth in remuneration is unrelated to the growth of the company.
Excessive pay rates for CEOs in particular, are justified by ‘international benchmarking’ against comparable Australasian and international companies. “Independent” remuneration advisors help shape wage rates and rises, but grouping pay rates into quartiles and deciles tends to become inflationary, creating a natural wage ‘escalator’ effect, knocking rates up ever higher. The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2016/17 says that in most countries, salary bands exhibit a gradual climb across the deciles, until the top ranges where there’s a big jump, especially to the top 1%.

The authors of the report looking at wage inequality in the workplace, found that some wage inequality reflects worker’s individual and productive characteristics, but wage inequality also reflects gender, enterprise size, type of contract and sector. It’s no coincidence that there are fewer women and people of colour the higher up the salary and power ladder you go. On average, men have the highest salaries overall.

Rising CEO wages and growing wage inequality are proof that the promised trickle down of wealth in a growing economy fails to occur. More accurately, wealth rushes up. The pay packets of NZ’s largest company CEOs grew three times that of general workers. ‘Closing the Gap’, a NZ based income equality project, says that CEO pay has risen by 85% in recent decades, compared with 13.5% for regular employees.

Helen Roberts, accounting lecturer at the University of Otago says CEOs earn 15 times the typical worker’s pay. But it’s not just in the private sector that obscene pay rates and income disparity apply either. State sector bosses earn at least five times the pay of regular employees.

Though not of the dizzying heights of the private sector, the chief of the NZ Superannuation Fund was paid $950,000, the CEO of ACC was paid $810,000, of the State Services Commission, $760,000, and so on.

The highest paid employee at the Auckland District Health Board, earned over $1.5million, compared with registered nurses who earn between $22 and $32 an hour, or maximum $69,000 per annum.

Bryan Bruce also makes the point about growing disparity between other members of the public sector, namely parliamentarians and public servants. This year, new and returning MPs are due for a pay rise on previous rates. The Prime Minister’s new pay rate is $471,049 per annum or $9058 a week. The leader of the opposition will take home $296,007 a year, or almost $6000 a week. Backbenchers will be paid $163,961 a year. Bryan Bruce compares this with the top pay scale for teachers at $78,000 per annum, whereas back in 1979, backbenchers and teachers were paid the same.

Add to these injustices, the pay rates for sports(men). Kiwi Steven Adams has a projected income of $35million for playing basketball. Scott Dixon, Indy Car driver, earned $11million last year. Dan Carter is paid $2.7million for playing rugby. Some All Blacks are now earning $1million a year.

Public opinion surveys have found that up to 72% of New Zealanders believe wealth is deserved and legitimate. Even excessive wealth is seen as derived from individual talent and benefits, “people deserve the massive pay they receive because they’ve earned it”. Max Rashbrooke says we’ve become more tolerant of inequality. He says acceptance of inequality is a cultural phenomenon. He refers to Japan where the CEOs of huge companies would never be paid the sort of excesses paid here.

But in the face of Theo Spierings’ latest pay rise, some within New Zealand society, including farmers, expressed concern. Winston Peters called for ‘Say on Pay’ rules so shareholders get input to management pay rates. ‘Say on Pay’ schemes overseas have led to greater transparency – apparently the CEO of BP had his pay rate cut by 40% as a result. In Portland, Oregon, publicly traded companies are required to pay a surtax when CEOs earn more than 100 times the median of company workers. Higher tax rates for higher salaries can also contribute to the redistribution of disproportionate pay. But even though the minimum pay rate is as low as is tolerable, and still it’s not enough to live on, there’s never any real momentum behind reining in obscene pay excesses with a maximum pay rate at the other extreme.

Felicity Caird from the NZ Institute of Directors Governance Leadership Centre, warns that excessive pay “…can erode public trust and confidence”. Britain’s High Pay Commission warns that pay inequality “undermines employee motivation, damages public trust, widens the gap between the haves and have nots, and leads to political instability”. British Prime Minister Theresa May says “peoples’ faith in capitalism is at stake”. Here, Professional Director Michael Stiassny, says the corporate world has a responsibility to ensure corporate excesses don’t occur. “We must come to a debate about what’s fair remuneration for CEOs compared with the minimum wage paid to workers”. “There will need to be some rebalancing” to avoid widespread marginalisation, manifest in reactions like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Pay excesses have got so extreme that even the legitimacy of capitalism is in question.

So despite the myth of egalitarian New Zealand, income inequality perpetuates gender, race and class exclusion. In a world of scarce resources, extremes of wealth and poverty are two sides of the same coin. The rich get richer and the poor walk in homeless peoples’ shoes.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/10/01/theo-spierings-an-icon-of-inequality/feed/34Little chance of system change, but change in government is a good place to starthttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/09/16/little-chance-of-system-change-but-change-in-government-is-a-good-place-to-start/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/09/16/little-chance-of-system-change-but-change-in-government-is-a-good-place-to-start/#commentsFri, 15 Sep 2017 21:05:48 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=92125

The election race is incredibly close. The ability to form a government is in Labour’s grasp. So it’s easy to forget that not six weeks ago it looked like Labour were a spent force. The fact that Labour and National are now neck and neck shows that in many ways, Jacinda, as much as the Labour Party, has already won. She’s breathed fresh life into the Labour body and soul. She’s reached new audiences. She’s charmed the media (Jacindamedia). She’s led the release of Labour Party policy so it has publicly claimed, in moderate fashion, ground previously staked out by the Greens. She’s celebrated an empathetic and positive style of campaigning with her relentless smile. But she’s been ruthless in her pursuit of every vote, she cut Meteria Turei loose, has been resistant to strategic deals. She’s running a ‘First Past the Post’ campaign, seeking victory for Labour, not for the broader Left. She’s been audacious. It’s been phenomenal to see how a new, confident, sassy woman leader has been able to reignite the Labour Party and the left-leaning voting public.

You could say Jacinda Ardern is evidence of what one woman can do to a political party’s fortunes. And on the other hand, so is Metiria Turei. Their voting rankings have been inverse. There are dramatic graphs that show the plummeting of Green votes in clear opposite direction to the ascent of Labour. Though in both cases, neither woman stands alone, and both their parties, the public and the press have also shaped the current state of play.

What a fascinating chain of events it has been that saw Green support growing while Labour declined, then Andrew Little’s resignation and Jacinda’s election to leader, to the Green’s near collapse, through to Labour and National being nearly equal contenders now. And United Future have no future, and Winston is struggling for air. We’ve had election hyperdrive.

The changing role of the media, the ‘celebrity’ angle of much of the coverage (even of Bill English!) and social media platforms allowing instantaneous access to information, speeches, events and engagements, may have added to voter volatility. Voters can consider and compare policies and performances in real time, across a range of media, and review voting preferences accordingly. Even now there’s evidence of more voter swings, with a bounce back to the Greens, perhaps lest they be lost from Parliament altogether, and in response to a warming to James Shaw? And even Winston has not been immune to the wild political winds; despite an initial artful dodge from the scrutiny he deserved over his pension overpayment, his party has still been damaged, and in light of his response to Guyon Espiner’s fair, paced and reasonable interview this week, he should be damaged more.

What looked like it was going to be a sleep walk for voters and for National, has become an even contest where Labour are once again serious contenders to government, and for the first time maybe even with the Greens as a coalition partner. Imagine a future where Winston Peters is not the kingmaker, but the Greens are! Queenmakers! For those of us who want a change of government, there is indeed hope.

But for those of us who also want a more fundamental change than just rearranging the parliamentary seating order, and minor changes by degrees, in some ways, hope competes with despair. I’d like to take a vote on neo-liberalism itself but it’s not even on the agenda.

I despair because, based on current polls, around 40% of voters support the National Party. I know these people, some of them are ‘good’ people, but they really believe that things are ok, because they’re ok. I despair because maybe more than half New Zealanders conflate self-interest with the public interest. Around 40%, and maybe a majority, of New Zealanders are happy to accept the increase in inequality, poverty and misery that the current government, and past neo-liberal governments, have inflicted upon society creating a growing workers’ precariat, inequality and an ‘under’ class. An underclass, for whom “it’s their fault”, “they’re no-hopers”, they should “save more”, “work harder”, “not have children…”. I despair that anyone thinks it’s ok to be paid the minimum wage, to have insecure hours, when it’s not even enough to live on. I despair because some voters are so scared of having their holiday home or investment properties taxed they’re prepared to just step over the homeless, poor, or socially dysfunctional. They’re prepared to sacrifice good public health services for lower taxes. I despair because around 40% of New Zealanders think that polluted rivers and dead oceans are fair costs of doing business, and all of this is the result of good economic management.
And although it’s now politically acceptable for both former and aspiring Prime Ministers, such as Jim Bolger and Jacinda Ardern, to acknowledge the failure of neo-liberalism, it’s still not politically acceptable to do anything much about it. There are differences in the methods of ameliorating capitalism’s injustices, but beyond the oppositional rhetorical positioning, most of the parties are on the same side.

There’s nothing unreasonable in wanting a good society where people have dignity and are paid well for working in safe conditions. It’s not radical to want to protect the natural values of our beautiful country, species, our planet. It’s not radical to want fairer distribution of wealth and power. But the fear of taxes, the constraints of Reserve Bank settings, and Fiscal Responsibility rules, and existing international trade agreements, the demands of the market, all limit the scope of the possible.

The paradigm that sets the parameters for debate ensures the parties’ policies just differ by degrees, and Labour are closer to National than they are apart. National are still very much the party of privatisation, but after all, there’s not that much left to sell (hence state-owned farms are now on the block). Support for the TPP remains a main-party consensus. And despite the fear-mongering from National, Labour’s policy to prevent overseas ownership of NZ houses which might require amendment to free trade deals, is unlikely to unravel the free trade world order. Sure, in contrast with National, Labour offers a more humane, interventionist-state model. In the club of Trudeau and Macron, it’s a new popular version of third way capitalism (‘fourth way’?), neo-liberalism in lipstick.

In some ways, National’s last year in office could be defined as one of inhumanity. Their refusal to hold an inquiry into the treatment of children in state care, their resistance to Cave Creek justice, and their untenable defence of hospital underfunding, have all been National own-goals.
But no matter who is elected they’ll continue to serve the interests of capital – parties of different colours, playing and managing responses to broader macroeconomic conditions, sometimes through deregulation, sometimes through intervention, but ultimately serving the market. If they didn’t offer that they’d have no chance of getting elected at all. And you’d never get elected to govern if you threatened the comfortable middle-class status quo too much either. But can you address poverty and homelessness if you can’t even change tax settings? Can you affect the radical change needed to ‘fix’ New Zealand, and discard neo-liberalism, through incrementalism?

Martin Van Beyen says in a Stuff article ‘A Changing of the Guard is Underway’, that as part of the ‘generational change’ represented by Jacinda Ardern, we’re moving more towards a Scandinavian model of capitalism, away from the American/Australian style (?). I’m not sure, but that would be a step in the right direction, and you sure won’t get elected if you’re too radical anyway.

Just as acknowledging neo-liberalism as a failure logically requires a change to the model, you can’t note that climate change is the nuclear issue of our generation, but still condone new oil and extraction in NZ. But then Michael Cullen used that line too, and greenhouse gas emissions are worse now than they were even then. So never mind a climate revolution, despite admitting to the problem, we haven’t even started on transition yet. A Labour-Green coalition might improve the chances of Labour’s good words becoming reality. (Especially compared with the ‘direction of travel’ of a New Zealand First – Labour coalition instead).

I really hope we get a change in government and I believe Jacinda Ardern will make a very good Prime Minister, one we can be proud of as a nation. A strong Green Party in coalition, would add a sound environmental conscience. Structural problems like indebtedness, homelessness, biodiversity loss, a growth model based on finite resources, will be harder, and take longer to resolve.

And though I despair that the prospects of system change are low, and of climate change, are high, a change in government, is a good place to start.

The National Party trumped its ‘Bootcamp’ policy this week with another ‘tough on crime’ dog whistle playing to conservative voters’ fears about illicit drugs and gangs.

The policy includes new spending of $82 million over four years, with $42million for (more) assertive policing of gang members and drugs, and $40 million for drug rehabilitation services. Treating addiction is important enough in itself. But this policy couples National’s ‘war on drugs’ with a ‘war on gangs’. It doubles down on a failed approach to the trade in methamphetamine and synthetic cannabis, out of context of wider drug and alcohol reform alternatives. It takes a ‘hard line’ approach to gangs, and drugs, that history shows makes problems worse.

The National Party policy builds on their 2016 Gang Action Plan suggesting new tough ‘anti-gang’ powers for police to search “gang members’ and criminals’” and their cars and houses at any time to check for firearms, in addition to existing powers to search for drugs without a warrant, to “march through their houses at will”.

The initiative is misdirected in many areas. It targets specific sub-cultures and punishes people for their social groupings, despite rights to freedom of organisation and association, and erodes protection against arbitrary search, arrest and detention, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And if it’s about drugs, then why focus specifically on gangs? Gangs are far from the only manufacturers and dealers of P and synthetics. The proposal allows vague and ill-defined power to the police – who defines the members of a gang? The police? The gang? Who defines what is a gang? Does this policy extend to gang associates and hangers-on? How far does this rule extend? Are the homes of family and friends hosting gang members open to search as well? And how many times are the police entitled to search?

New Zealand apparently has more gang members per head of population than any other country. There are around 70 major gangs, and about 4000 patched gang members. Bill English mentioned a New Zealand gang register of 5000 people. The biggest gang in New Zealand is the Mongrel Mob. A third of prisoners are patched gang members, and a third of them belong to the Mongrel Mob. Gang expert, Dr Jared Gilbert says this new policy is cynical politicking, ‘sinister, dangerous and outrageous’.

Human rights are universal, indivisible, and equal. They are fundamental, applicable by virtue of being human. But this policy admits fewer human rights are owed to different members of society (usually black, poor, with intergenerational history of gang involvement). Just like the bootcamp policy, this one has strong racial and class bias.

Bill English and Paula Bennett admitted the new powers would stretch human rights laws, but would only apply to serious criminals who had ‘fewer human rights than others’ anyway, clearly misunderstanding human rights. We should be wary when the Prime Minister and his Deputy are prepared to trade off these rights as a pawn in desperate election politics.

Criminals aren’t born, they’re created. They’re created in response to a combination of factors such as socioeconomic status (poverty) and class (social marginalisation and exclusion), family dysfunction, illiteracy, unemployment, substance abuse and mental ill-health. And they’re created by punitive laws, ‘penal populism’ leading to policies ‘strong on law and order’, unconscious bias in the police force, and subsequent distortions in remand terms and conditions, sentencing and incarceration.

The heat of the election campaign has inevitably led to the National Party pulling out its ‘tough on crime and punishment’ trick, to appeal to the (property based) interests of its conservative audience. Criminals are an easy target. Disempowered by a lack of freedoms that literacy and economic stability provide, even before incarceration, denied even the right to vote, prisoners epitomise a ‘criminalised’ underclass.

National’s proposed ‘boot camp’ military academy initiative to deal with youth offenders, echoes the bias and superficial reaction to law breaking too often seen in criminal justice narratives. The “lock them up” mentality in reality has a strong racial and class bias that’s manifest in a disproportionate number of young, Maori, men in prison, such that while Maori make up less than 15% of the New Zealand population, they are more than 50% of this country’s prisoners.

Media focus on criminal incidents tends to overstate the risk of being a victim of crime. But both the prevalence and impacts of crime are overstated. In fact, 3% of the population experience 53% of crime. The Dunedin longitudinal study found that 20% of the study cohort were responsible for 97% of criminal convictions. Not to belittle any harm from crime, but victims are often other criminals, and/or the same social group. Overall crime rates are going down, even while the number of those in prison is going up. Reaction to incidents of violent crime led to bail changes in the Bail Amendment Act (2013) and more prisoners in remand. And the government’s budget this year announced the bringing forward of $1 billion worth of spending, to build yet another prison.

New Zealand already has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world. We have 39% more people in jail per capita than the UK, 34% more per capita in prison than Australia, 73% more than Canada. Incidentally the latter two countries also have had colonisation histories, so although colonisation can explain the high proportion of indigeneity the countries’ total prison populations, in itself, it can’t explain why New Zealand’s prison population is so much higher than the other countries. National laws reflect a particular political setting; our high level of imprisonment is a political choice, a system of economics as well as law that specifically criminalises some more than others.

For some, criminality is over-determined. Studies show that if you come from a poor, dysfunctional family, your chances of going to jail are greater than otherwise. And countries with high levels of inequality are also those with high levels of incarceration. National economic conditions and the lottery of birth already sets some on a path toward imprisonment that’s hard to defy. 83% of prisoners are unemployed before they go to prison, meaning they’re already marginalised from the usual economic and social statuses that come with being part of the formal economy. 75% of prisoners are illiterate, meaning they’re excluded from the power of the written language, its function in bureaucratic and economic processes. It’s hard to get a licence if you can’t read and write. And if you can’t get a licence, it’s hard to get a job, and if you can’t get a job, there’s more chance you’ll go to prison…. And if you’re young and Maori you have a greater chance of being intercepted by the police, and more chance of having misdemeanour charges laid such as possession of cannabis which easily set you on the road to criminality.

But then also, Maori are seven times more likely to get a custodial sentence for their crimes than non-Maori, and 11 times more likely to be remanded in custody awaiting trial. Maori are less likely to have legal representation and more likely to plead guilty to crimes than their European counterparts. While you see more Maori criminality reported in the news, and more Maori in prisons, they are underrepresented in the police force, as policy makers, judges, lawyers and jurors. You’ll generally see fewer Maori represented even in the media as role models, except as exceptions, and more often they’re reflected as stereotypical criminal threats to social harmony and safety. For many Maori, their male role models are only seen in positions of power as parts of gangs or in jail, seldom in positions of power in the state or criminal justice apparatus. Maori have little stake in the western criminal justice system except as subjects of it.

To look at the systemic causes of our high imprisonment rate is not to absolve people of abhorrent crimes. But victimless crimes, drug and alcohol offences, a range of other illegal acts, could be dealt with more efficiently than through prison. The fact that imprisonment falls disproportionately on some sectors of the community perpetrates an injustice rather than the justice it’s intended to serve. No wonder it’s seen as illegitimate by those criminalised by its very structure. As if socio-economic exclusion and the principle of exercise of state coercion isn’t enough to marginalise and alienate you further from a society whose rules you already don’t accept, those on remand (whether they’re convicted of crimes later or not) are exposed to the violent, criminogenic forces in prison while they wait for their court hearings.

Then there’s the argument that prisons probably actually cause more crime. ‘JustSpeak’ say ‘our overuse of prison as a response to harm does not reduce the chance of that harm happening again, it increases it’. Once a person has been to jail, the chances of them going again increases by manifest degrees.

But in addition to the innocent victims of (violent etc) crime, and the additional harm done to those in jail, there are other harms to innocents perpetuated by New Zealand’s penal culture. There are about 23,000 children in this country who have one or more parent in prison. About 10,000 Maori children have a parent in jail, usually their dads, but also, often, their uncles, brothers, cousins, and sometimes their grandads as well. When the main breadwinner is locked up in jail, there’s further economic and domestic hardship, uncertainty, insecurity and disrupted learning for these kids, increasing the risk of the next generation also being at odds with the state, destined for criminality through illiteracy, poor socio-economic status and family dysfunction.

Despite evidence that investment in the first few years of a child’s life can positively affect health and social outcomes and make a difference to these and engagement and incarceration rates, forever, timely intervention and support through public and social services, and housing and income for at risk communities is less a priority for the Government, than building more prisons and ‘boot camps’.
In their recently released policy statement on prisons, The Opportunities Party talked about ‘Maori mass imprisonment”. TOP argue for giving prisoners more power, not less, with policies supporting a return of voting rights, increased addiction services, a strengthened Clean Slate Act, decriminalisation of marijuana. They quote from Finland which successfully managed to get its prison population down. To get the prison population down, society, bureaucracy and political institutions actually have to want to.

It’s apparent that the National Party would like our high current (Maori) rates of incarceration to continue. And by failing to address inequality, to invest in extended paid parental leave, literacy interventions, bail Act amendments, drug reform and meaningful change to the nature of imprisonment as a tool of power against an ethnic and demographic underclass, generations more young Maori men, will continue to go to jail. The odds are stacked against young, illiterate, poor Maori men in National’s game of modern monopoly. For them, there’s no passing go, no collecting their $200 at the start of the game, but instead they’re destined to go straight to jail.

A week is a long time in politics, and Meteria Turei must have thought the last ten days was an eternity. The media baying like hounds focused on her admission of non-disclosure of flatmates’ rent while receiving the DPB, deliberately took attention away from significant new social policy. The ‘benefit fraud’ story was picked at in every possible way, inflicted upon the public like Chinese water torture.

In contrast, the media pressure on and stare-down of Andrew Little, leading to his departure, was politics at the speed of light. Time always goes a bit crazy in an election year, and hyperbole, and character attacks on the left are de rigeur. Let’s not forget the Donghua Liu lies attacking David Cunliffe, that saturated the front page of the Herald during the 2014 election. We shouldn’t be surprised that Andrew Little has been undermined and resigned under pressure.

A steady hand on the tiller is required to navigate tumultuous political waters, full of snapping sharks, but it was apparent that for the time being at least, there wasn’t much public confidence in Andrew Little’s hands on the Labour Party wheel, and even he didn’t have confidence in his own.

Like many Labour leaders before him, most people admit Andrew Little is a ‘decent’ guy. He’s ‘a good unionist, sincere, a man with integrity’. But even as the media quickly zeroed in on Labour’s negative polls, Little scored his ‘own goals’ in admitting he was uncertain of his position as leader and by claiming that ‘you can’t form a government at 24% in the polls’. In fact, despite the decline in support for Labour in the latest polls, the chances of the current opposition parties forming a coalition (pending agreement with New Zealand First), increased while National’s support and chance of governing alone further declined.

After the third poll released last night showed a cluster of negative (disastrous?) results, putting Labour in the low 20% vote share, and ‘left wing’ commentators started saying Andrew Little could and should resign, his departure became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even then Andrew could have stood his ground and refused to buckle. ‘The signs are printed and already erected. The policies are sound. We have to stay the course’. Instead, another Labour leader bit the dust, his ‘lack of charisma’ failed to ignite the electorate, his confidence (never actually overwhelming) was mortally wounded. “In the interests of the party” he handed the reins to his younger, ‘more charismatic’ deputy, Jacinda Ardern. Another Labour Party leader is history.

Critics on the left and the right look at Labour’s dismal poll results, and the emergency change of leader and ask whether the Party is in terminal decline, in a death spiral, no longer relevant. ‘They’re on their fifth leader in nine years’. ‘They’re National-lite, not clearly distinguishable in policy or style – so why not just vote National? And if you want a party that’s strong on immigration, vote NZ First; or for environmental policies, vote Greens or maybe ToP’. Gone apparently, are the days of strong binary politics in New Zealand, and Labour’s a victim of the spread of choice across the broadly left and liberal vote. And after all, National and Labour are quite alike too.

Labour definitely couldn’t afford to poll any lower – without risking key senior MPs. So the departure of Andrew Little probably couldn’t damage the party any more than if he were to stay. Even though it’s extraordinary (but not unprecedented) for a leader to resign so close to an election, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Looking at feedback online in social and mainstream media, you might think that the appointment of Jacinda Ardern and Kelvin Davis as leader and deputy, was an inspired move, that couldn’t have been planned better. Their appointment has given rise to optimism and positivity but concern about the timing. Without irony people are using the Little / Ardern tag line ‘A fresh approach’ to define what Ardern and Davis offer. Ardern is talking about values and hope. I saw a video where the caucus were actually laughing together and seemed unified and excited (maybe that was nervousness!). That all seemed unusual, and encouraging in itself. Jacinda seems to have got over her reservations about being leader and is rising to the challenge. Can you imagine the courage that must take at this time? Some suggest it’s ‘greatness, being thrust upon her’. Others say she’s jumping on a grenade, using her one (?) shot at leadership in a forced, false start that’s doomed this close to an election when the party is so far behind.

The new leadership team say they’ll take stock of the campaign and Party position for 72 hours. That’s prudent given the polls and the opportunity presented by the media attention and space to genuinely take a ‘fresh approach’. As leader, Jacinda will be more able to develop style and substance that’s more authentic to her, instead of the sidekick, trailing Andrew Little that she has been so far in this campaign. James Shaw, co-leader of the Green Party said Jacinda’s election drastically improves the chances of a rise in Labour’s fortunes and a change in government. Though the invisible wildcard in that picture is still Winston Peters not Jacinda Ardern.

The commentariat seem to love comparisons, and there are questions about whether Jacinda’s our Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, with potential to offer radical alternative policy options, or maybe just our Trudeau (a young, handsome, moderate left / conservatively progressive leader). There’s definitely an opportunity for Labour to step away from its current conservative incrementalism that still seeks to ameliorate the worst travesties of capitalism rather than remove them. There’s room for a seriously alternative, radical vision, that deals with the causes of entrenched poverty, inequality and environmental destruction that are intrinsic to the neoliberal, capitalist programme, at both national and international level.

Such a radical policy framework for the left could revisit business and capital gains taxes and operational settings, international trade and security arrangements, peace and disarmament, even changes in the definitions and ownership of property, fundamental improvements in the rights of nature and the environment, consideration of intergenerational equity. That’s what real change could look like. There could be an alternative agenda, but it’s highly unlikely. At more local pragmatic level, Kelvin Davis’ concerns about prisoners and prisons could be addressed by the decriminalisation of (natural) cannabis, but we’ll see whether they’re up even for that as part of a ‘fresher’ approach.

It would take some leader to carry such a different vision in New Zealand, and an increase of about 200,000 votes to get Labour to a strong enough position to implement such a plan. That’s a lot of change from the current Labour Party position and a lot of votes.

Last week the G20, (Group of Twenty) of leaders from some of the world’s largest economies, met in Hamburg, Germany. The self-selected ‘cabal’ of ‘Caesars’ meeting at the G20 represented 85% of the world’s GDP, had limited political mandate to make decisions, and excluded most of the ‘Global South’. They embodied the world’s richest elites making decisions affecting the world’s poorest, behind closed doors. One evening, leaders from Trump to Trudeau, were entertained in a concert hall by Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, while tens / hundreds of thousands of citizens protested the impacts of global capitalism on burning streets outside.

US President Donald Trump was in Hamburg with his wife and the rest of his nepotistic entourage masquerading as officials. He came face to face with Putin for the first time. They possibly shared strange handshakes, maybe they even chest bumped. Trump continued to defy political consensus, maintaining his isolationist policies on climate change and economic protectionism. Turkey’s President attended, but his crack down on opposition forces continued at home. China’s President Xi sat among leaders of the capitalist west while the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo died in prison.

But despite the mustering of defences, and the show of strength, global capitalism is on the run. It’s contradictions and limitations are becoming ever clearer. Indeed, the G20 heads of state first met in response to the Global Financial Crisis, to stabilise capitalism and to improve ‘global governance’. Agenda items this year included global economic growth, international trade, financial market regulation and ‘issues of global significance’ such as migration, digitisation, terrorism and climate change. In addition to limits to growth, a globally saturated market, deindustrialisation leading to a ‘middle class crisis’ and nationalist populism and instability in the west, these globally significant issues are threats to global capitalism. Globalisation, say some economists, has lost its dynamism, it has run out of new markets to exploit. With the hollowing out of developed western economies and saturation of markets and credit, and the emergence of protectionism, capitalism is at ‘tipping point’, it may already have eaten itself, and the G20 are doing everything to keep it alive.

Global capitalism, rather than creating a rising tide that lifted all boats, has instead led to ‘the great convergence’, a concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Nearly all gains from globalisation have been concentrated in six countries, and the greatest benefits have accumulated in China’s emerging middle class and the elite 1% mostly from the US. Now, eight billionaires own the same as the poorest half of the world’s population – about 3.6 billion people.

But an alternative agenda was evident at the G20 too. The G20 meeting provides a focus for dissent. It becomes a lightning rod for a range of concerns about the current economic model. More than 100,000 protestors attended the Hamburg G20, not just the world leaders. There was an ‘alternative global solidarity summit’. Greenpeace interrupted a bulk freighter bringing in a shipment of charcoal in protest against fossil fuels. The ‘Zombie march’ of 1000 clay caked artists highlighted the malaise of civic apathy. Masked protestors dressed in black were met with a phalanx of special armed police forces with aggressive attitudes, water cannons, armoured vehicles and even a ‘survivor tank’ designed to withstand chemical and nuclear attack. 15,000 police were deployed, 400 of whom were injured. 400 protestors were arrested, but the number of injured protestors was unreported. A city official described the melee as ‘organised and long prepared criminal violence as never witnessed before’. Protestors were charged, bashed with truncheons, punched, run to the ground. In turn, cars were burned, shops were looted, it was a ‘new dimension of violence’ on the streets of Germany’s second largest city.

Past gatherings of world leaders at G20 meetings such as in Seattle in 2010, have also been accompanied by civil unrest and riots. It’s been easy for conservatives to decry the acts of protest and dissidence and to blame the protestors rather than the police, the police state or the international system that inflicts violence at personal, civic, cultural and ecosystem levels. Campaigners for global justice and against the inequalities and destruction of global capitalism, have been derided for being environmentalists, fascists, Marxists, ‘obscurantists’. They’ve been condemned as privileged white kids wearing branded gear protesting against sweatshops. But they’ve shone a light against inequality, injustice, exploitation, war, manmade environmental disaster, the very consequences of capitalism on grand scale. Opponents to globalisation have had their views and values dismissed because of their ‘ignorance of (trickle down) economics’, they’ve been belittled and ignored because they’re from affected distant countries, they’ve been beaten down and hidden by walls of police.

But loss of jobs, homes, hope and land don’t just affect people in the Third World as multinationals move on in. Hopelessness, alienation, inequality, middle class poverty, are all being felt as consequences of global capitalism, and rejected, in western democracies too. The election of Trump, the Brexit vote, the rise of far right and populist politics across the developed world, are all consequences of global capitalism and a distrust of the establishment and contemporary economic solutions.

So while opponents of global capitalism who adopt radical tactics to express their discontent, attack weaknesses in the edifice from without, angry middle class voters in the US, the UK, France, Italy and beyond, use the ballot box as a way of being heard from within, with further economically destabilising results. Globalisation has led to alienation, alienation to instability. Instability further undermines the economic project though it’s already seriously wounded from its own contradictions and limits. The reactionary path of protectionism, closed borders and nationalism further breeds isolationism and fear. Global problems like climate change, migration, the crisis of capitalism and the need for system alternatives, have no national solutions. But global capitalism with its concentration of wealth and power, with its control over access to work, a home of ones’ own, its attack on human dignity, is no sustainable solution either.

Winston Peters came to my home town of Kumeu last weekend. I thought I’d go along to check him out. I’d wondered why people vote NZ First, though a number of good people I know are keen supporters. I wanted to see if the hype was true about his alleged charisma and charm, get to the bottom of those provocative immigration policies, try to get a measure of the man. Our Helensville seat was ‘owned’ by John Key for the last fifteen years, and we rarely get party leaders to our area, so I was hoping for a spectacle, fire and brimstone maybe, the crowd set alight.

New Zealand First ran a slick operation, with friendly and genuine ‘Young NZ First’ supporters smartly dressed in black branded gear, directing traffic and welcoming meeting goers. Inside, there were more friendly supporters in black, so much that I thought I had stumbled on a gathering of Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church. They stood around like a gentle mafia, seemingly indefatigable in their allegiance and loyalty to the man and his party.

The Kumeu community made a good showing, with the spacious hall quite full. I saw old time locals and new residents all come to see what Winston had to offer. There were Labour and Green supporters that I recognised, maybe just there for some Sunday afternoon entertainment, maybe jaded, looking for a point of difference, something less middle-ground than the current opposition ‘left’.

Winston is touring the country from top to bottom, in a big mobile billboarded bus. Apparently the bus is too big for New Zealand roads, a problem in rural communities and in Auckland traffic, so the main attraction himself was fashionably late. The crowd were entertained by well humoured sound engineers and patient electorate supporters waiting for the man. While we waited and waited, strangers talked to each other and passed the time of day.

One woman we got talking to firmly believed the crime in society today is because current youth know no respect and have no discipline. She was outspoken with support for being able to hit children. She reckons it does kids good to have them living in fear of violence. “It never did us any harm”. She used a leather strop on her own kids and thinks people now should be able to do the same. She thought NZ First might repeal the ‘anti smacking’ law, though in fact they suggest a referendum on the matter. She was ‘tough on crime and punishment’ and thought we should lock more people up. She didn’t realise we already have one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world. She wanted more money from the government to support her retirement, but condemned ‘bludgers and intergenerational unemployment’, with strong racial overtones. She did mention that her own son had been in trouble with the police, and in her opinion, treated in an arbitrary, racist and harsh way, though again I pointed out, that’s what being hard on crime and punishment looks like too.

Conversations like that are like political anthropology, and I wondered, had I met a ‘typical NZ First voter’? Or was she here just to check out Winston too? Was she a swing voter, a jaded National Party voter even? Was she like many of us, with predisposed political values, looking for someone framing the right questions and providing the answers we want to hear. Are we looking for resonance sometimes in the strangest, most cynical of places.

Winston’s entrance itself was suitably staged and dramatic. In a show of political theatre that’s common to all political parties, the leader was welcomed with standing applause. I heard someone murmur, like upon the coming of a king, ‘the silver fox’. It wasn’t quite a cult of personality on show in the Kumeu Hall, but a modest construction of it. All self-presence and cool poise, Winston’s first charm offensive was to smile at the audience.

He fumbled the announcement of the three local woman candidates who include Tracey Martin, party stalwart, current MP and Rodney candidate, Anne Degia-Pala, former Labour candidate and now standing for Kelston, and the Helensville candidate Helen Peterson. I know Tracey and Anne as straight up, hard working women, and they may all be great candidates, but Winston’s introduction was underwhelming. Shane Jones didn’t attend the meeting but he cast a shadowy, slightly noxious pall.

Winston soon hit his stride with fervent support for local causes. He spoke to the issues of the area with his pro-rail policies (trains to Huapai, rail freight to Marsden Point and getting the trucks off the roads). He rightly criticised the government’s Special Housing Areas in Kumeu which are bringing thousands of new houses and cars but little infrastructural improvement. At times the rhetoric got the better of him “I bet you’ve never even been asked what you want”. This, despite the very good engagement from the Rodney Local Board on many issues, most recently in its draft Local Board Plan on which submissions closed on Friday. It’s not true that people have never been asked. But it makes good political sense to appeal to peoples’ feeling of general disenfranchise. Hyperbole and fomented sense of injustice are good politics too.

Winston’s speech was a journey through New Zealand’s glorious and inglorious past. The ghosts and spirit of Seddon, Nash and Holyoake were conjured up. You could almost feel them there. But the darker presence of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson were the devils in the room. There were stories of victims and villains, heroes (Winston himself even), battles between good and evil. New Zealand’s history was laid out like an epic battle, that still goes on. It was like a legend from a Kiwi Game of Thrones. And in this story, Winston is the knight that will ride on in intercession and save the day.

His speech covered predictable, but genuinely worrying touch points in New Zealand contemporary society. In a globalised world, the capture of critical export markets by overseas interests, for example. He singled out the agricultural sector where Synlait and other Chinese companies, have cornered the whole meat and dairy supply chain including ‘our’ exports of infant milk powder formula (to China). We want them to buy our milk and meat, but we don’t want them to make their own, here. It’s hard to discern who is the parasite when we want access to overseas markets at the cost of our environment, but don’t want them investing here directly. We want our cake, and the Chinese to eat it too, and the Chinese want our cake and to eat it too. Though some of the ironic subtleties of exports and market capture were lost on the audience.

Winston talked about the injustice of student loans and the barriers of student fees. In the best line of the show, he said there are students leaving university looking for jobs, owing more than their parents who have one. He talked about poverty, inequality, New Zealand’s long working hours relative to others in the world, our low productivity rates, the absence of added value to our primary production exports. Missing critical factors like geography and political culture, he imagined New Zealand could become another Singapore or Taiwan. He reflected on the underinvestment in tourism infrastructure.

He raised cheers from the audience speaking against the TPPA. He appealed to our sense of national identity, what it is to be a New Zealander, what New Zealand is and what we want it to be.

He roused the audience when he talked about immigration, suggesting people be allowed to come here based only on genuine need, not race or wealth. New Zealand First he said, would not accept ‘economic refugees’. But at the same time he said if we can’t fix this country, he advises people to emigrate and live somewhere else – assumedly as economic refugees.

His speech was a mixture of firm policy proposals and nostalgic interludes. A showman, he’d occasionally flash that full-face smile, or make a joke. But he also reverted to racist stereotypes, making humour about his Scottish and Maori heritage. Not PC at all, but you can bet the audience didn’t care. And when he said he supported ‘one law for all’, whatever your race or wealth, you can bet the audience thought he meant that would be a white law, and that they’d avail themselves of the best law their money could buy if they ever needed to.

I didn’t come away converted into a New Zealand First voter. Though I did observe that at least some in the audience projected their own meaning onto his rhetoric and convinced themselves he and they were right. Winston accurately reflected the problems of our society, they’re common knowledge, but he didn’t have bold answers. He didn’t promise radical reform or a return to nationalisation or fundamental change to address inequality or injustice. His problem definition was sound, but he didn’t propose a fundamental alternative.

He took an unsophisticated approach to nationalism in an interdependent and globalised world. He was nostalgic rather than progressive. I found him slightly dangerous in his racism and how it incited public support. He was Trumpesque in his self-portrait of a man persecuted and misrepresented by the media. In the end, he’s a General in the Long Parade. Or to mix metaphors, he’s been in the game so long, he knows every card in the pack. On the night though, I felt the myth was bigger than the man. I’m not sure if I met any ‘typical NZ First voters’ there, but I went home worried about race relations in New Zealand. There was no revolution in the Kumeu Hall that night, but there was a slightly sinister smouldering.

Any sane, humane person viewing the footage of the Grenfell tower, burning with people alive inside, could not fail to be appalled. In the early stages of the fire, it was clear there was no way even the bravest fire service workers could save the lives of desperate residents. Fire hoses reaching only a quarter of the way up the building looked like hopeless token gestures. The sight of people futilely waving from windows as smoke then fire overcame them, made us all participants in a tragedy unfolding in real time before our eyes. We became witnesses to death. By-standers’ videos from the night show visions of hell. Fearsome fire, trapped innocents. People on the ground frustrated at seeing and hearing both friends and strangers calling for help in the face of flames. Live communications between loved ones confined by height and smoke and fire, diminishing, and then stopping altogether as the inferno took hold. Everybody’s worst nightmare played out in grim detail – Trapped in a burning high rise, with no way to escape. Peoples’ desperation as they threw babies, children, and themselves out windows or as they succumbed and died.

And now the litany of missing persons… Whole families, young couples full of promise, children separated from their parents in the rush and crush. A man who didn’t want to abandon his beloved dogs. A promising artist. So many people dead. Fire staff say some victims may never be identified. Incredibly, apparently the ‘true number of dead’ may never be known. A community worker assisting with evacuations told the Daily Mail that he believed no one in the top three floors could have survived.

These are scenes that should never be repeated, but this was no accident. This catastrophe was inevitable, as predicted by residents, and a case of systemic failure of government and council policy over a period of time. This was a perfect storm.

In the ongoing blogs from the Grenfell tower residents’ group, clearly articulated, reasonable and repeated concerns about fire risks, are no match for a system designed to disempower residents every step of the way. Jonathan Freedland writing in the Guardian says this catastrophe is the result of four key deliberate policy choices; deregulation, privatisation, inequality and austerity. These are the conservative forces of a neo-liberal agenda, and the deaths of these people are a direct consequence.
Deregulation reduced building and fire safety rules and standards, and allowed highly flammable cladding to cloak a building largely inaccessible to fire fighters, despite the product being banned because of realised fire risk elsewhere around the world. Apparently post-Brexit plans are to reduce ‘red tape’ and building regulation even further. And while the rich can afford to buy their fire security, their safety, and their legal representation to pursue justice, the poor are dead.

Privatisation meant that the Grenfell tower apartments were among 10,000 local social housing properties managed by the Kensington-Chelsea Tenant Management Association (KCTMA). The KCTMA is an arms’ length social housing management company that failed to return resident association calls or act on concerns, that refused to communicate or address issues seriously. The residents complained about the (one) regularly impeded fire escape, about dangerous power surges causing fire risks, about the lack of sprinklers, alarms, emergency lighting.

Communication from the company in response to these fears, was poor. The residents’ demands weren’t unreasonable, but no-one could be held accountable. Some say at least if the housing complex had continued to be run by the council, bad management could be punished at the ballot box, or recourse could be sought through public complaint. Despite the compelling concerns of the residents, communicated clearly, the KCTMA operated according to other imperatives; assumedly, saving money, at the expense of lives, the cost and loss of which, were accurately predicted by those who lived in the flats.

Almost everything wrong about inequality and the modern public sector was manifest in the Grenfell and similar tower blocks and in this fire. The South Kensington area is one of the most deprived areas in Britain. Hundreds of already disenfranchised and dispossessed, are crammed into low amenity tower blocks just down the road from the UK elite, some of the richest people on the planet, who live in multi-million-pound luxury apartments. Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian says “people were burned alive within feet of the country’s grandest mansions”.

Locals are angry at the effects of gentrification in the area that sees them further marginalised. They feel under pressure and that the council are looking for reasons to knock down the towers completely because of the value of the underlying land. It’s no coincidence that the work done on the building was a façade, a cosmetic improvement to enhance the look of Grenfell tower, apparently to appease wealthy residents and improve their views, rather than on fire safety improvements to enhance the tower’s function as a home for hundreds. Aamer Anwar, a human rights lawyer said ‘Councillors heeded the demands of the nearby rich people to reclad the building, instead of the demands of the residents to install fire suppression systems and improve the stairs”.

Austerity was the final fatal flaw in the modern policy paradigm that led to this disaster. Housing and safety inspection staff numbers have been stripped. In Parliament, Ministers rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestions that houses must be made ‘habitable’. In cost cutting measures, 10 fire stations were recently closed, 27 fire engines have been removed from service and 500 fire staff roles were axed. A further £23.5million worth of related budget cuts are planned for 2019.

Like many avoidable disasters in retrospect, there are so many things that could and should have been done differently. If only. If only smoke stop doors, sprinklers and fire containment systems had been retrofitted as recommended after a similar fatal fire in a tower block nearby in 2009. If only the KCTMO and even fire fighters, hadn’t advised people to stay put, to shut their doors and put down a wet towel to prevent smoke intrusion, rather than to evacuate. If only cost cutting hadn’t resulted in the use of a cheaper cladding product that was clearly highly flammable, rather than a non-flammable, but slightly more expensive alternative. If only the flammable product was banned in the UK as it is elsewhere, for buildings of this height, exactly because of the fire risk. If only a series of deliberate decisions had not eroded public safety regulations, corporatized housing management, stripped the public sector, concentrated race and class inequality into low standard housing enclaves.

Theresa May and her conservative agenda look even less legitimate now than just after the election. It shows a week is a long time in politics, and May’s hold on power is looking less tenable than ever. Duly criticised for her wider agenda, for being ‘dead to emotion or empathy’, avoiding the victims of the fire, for speaking ‘at’ the victims via tv rather than meeting with them directly on her first ‘non-visit’ to the site, it’s hard to imagine how she could have come across worse from her response to this disaster.
Deborah Orr also writing in the Guardian, says this event shows Britain as an angry and divided nation, ‘without a functioning government’. Angry crowds storming the local council chambers demanding answers (or acknowledgement at the very least), protestors calling for Theresa May to resign, calling her a coward, jeering, crying ‘shame’, shame, shame’. The Conservative leader is under pressure, and the conservative agenda is in the spotlight for its failings. One of the many articulate and angry locals said to a reporter ‘this is a message, this is the point where the system is broken’. This fire, and the deaths of so many already vulnerable and innocent victims, shows as usual, the unfair burden of costs of systemic failure rest on the shoulders of the poor.

Theresa May has promised a public inquiry into the disaster, though inquiries into similar disasters both in the UK and elsewhere in the similarly deregulated world, have led to little change. Reasonable cynicism leads to fears the inquiry will be a whitewash, that it will be biased, ineffectual, too little, too late. An inquiry into the disaster might take several years. In the meantime, the causes of such a tragedy, rooted in the wider neo-liberal agenda, will continue to prevail. Only when inequality, deregulation, austerity and privatisation are reversed, will justice be done for the Grenfell dead. In the meantime, the hollow, haunted Grenfell wreck that was home to as many as 600 people, will stand as a testimony, an epitaph to the epic failure of an economic programme that sacrifices its poor in pursuit of power and profit.

Unexpected electoral and referendum results have delivered the world Donald Trump, Brexit, Emmanuel Macron, and now, a victory in many terms, for Jeremy Corbyn, and his vision of British Labour and political options. The loss of Theresa May’s clear Conservative majority has already rocked conventional assumptions, agendas and elites. The realm of the politically possible has been blasted open – because the electoral support for Corbyn doesn’t just reflect a resurgence for British Labour, it has allowed a publicly popular discussion about a whole different political economy.

How inspiring and encouraging it is alone, that voters are using new campaign technologies to subvert traditional and conservative political systems to create prospects of system change. The mass mobilisation of voters through modern media channels and messaging increased turn out and Labour support.

Traditionally though major parties tend toward growing conservatism, a ‘centre ground’ that’s increasingly actually shifting to the right. Especially since the Washington Consensus of the 1980s, political rhetoric has emphasised the TINA principle – There is No Alternative, to neo-liberal capitalist and financial solutions to economic ‘problems’. Finally, with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, there’s a real leader, someone who isn’t scared to offer a different solution, a real alternative.
Jeremy Corbyn has shown the courage of his convictions and been rewarded for them. Finally, here is an anti-establishment, anti-politician. Derided as ‘unelectable’, for his humility, his principles, his ‘radicalism’, by peers, the media, and the Government, he was predicted to be disastrous for the Labour Party. His moral defeat of Theresa May and the Conservatives is almost as good as a full electoral defeat. Some political analysts go so far as saying it was the election that was best Corbyn not win outright, for the political quagmire that is Brexit.

All the same, Corbyn has garnered the Labour Party the most electoral support since the previous peak of 2005 when a young Tony Blair swept to power. Promising progressive Third Way politics, Blairism turned out to be more of the same old conservative way – British imperialism, privatisation of state owned assets, stripping the welfare state, bailouts for the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The Labour brand seemed a misnomer, no longer a party of workers’ rights or in touch with the common people. Now, British Labour is Europe’s largest political party, with more than 500,000 members.

Bhaskar Sunkara, in ‘Why Corbyn Won’ in Jacobin magazine, adds that Corbyn persevered, through troughs in the polls and stabs in the back from his own party, to develop a ‘real’ alternative. That’s what’s so exciting, unlike the false ‘left’ of so many ‘mature’ western democracies, including our own, Corbyn’s Labour Party vision authentically challenges capitalism’s ownership and control. “Corbynism sees beyond the inherent limits of reforms under capitalism, discusses ideas that aim to expand the scope of democracy, seeks to expand the co-operative sector, to create community owned enterprises and restore state control of key sectors of the economy’. Corbyn’s Labour ‘sets the course for deeper socialist transformation in the future’.

In the Guardian, Owen Jones agrees, saying Corbyn’s manifesto, ‘offered hope and promise to genuinely reform Britain’, to challenge (rather than indulge) vested interests, to eliminate injustices. He has had the courage to challenge entrenched military and defence narratives – unapologetically making the link between British imperialism and terror attacks at home. With that honesty, not without political risk (see accusations he is a ‘terrorist sympathiser), he has tapped into a wider public sentiment against injustice, corporate greed, racism, militarism and war.

It was the substance of that vision, the detail behind the grand transformative hope, that probably got out the voters too. The promise to end tuition fees for students is being linked simply to the record turnout of young voters. More than a million aged 18-24 have registered to vote since the snap election was called on April 8. As if young people are just self-interested without capacity for making informed decisions on wider issues such as low wages, climate change, austerity or injustice. But policies such as an end to zero-hours contracts, a £10 minimum wage, more tax on higher income earners, and nationalisation of key public services such as railways and the energy market, take the Labour Party back to the values for which it is named.

Theresa May’s austerity, and threats to reduce human rights protections to combat terrorism, reinforced the ‘radicalism’ of Corbyn’s approach, even though the Conservative agenda is really the one that should be seen as deviant from moral norms. With Corbyn and his policy commitments, you got a sense that was more than just rhetoric. These were principles, that were worth sticking to, even if they raised ire of established elites, even if it alienated him from his party!

Corbyn puts his success down to this ‘radical’ vision for a fairer Britain. “People have said they’ve had enough of austerity politics, of public expenditure cuts, of underfunding health, schools, education …for not giving young people the chance they deserve’.

We’ve hoped that activated, motivated civil society could change the world, before. Remember the promise and hope of Obama, “Yes we can”, and even relatively, of Blair? Capitalism still won’t counter any challengers. Powerful elites in commerce, industry, the military and the media will be ‘regrouping’. They’ve already started disowning losers (Theresa May, watch your back), and will no doubt continue their efforts to discredit ‘Corbynism’.

The next few days and weeks will continue to be a fascinating new journey in uncharted modern politics, reshaping conventional political possibilities, discourse and relationships. This election may not have delivered clear cut change in government for Britain. But for the first time in decades, paradigm change is actually on the agenda, and posing a credible and popular alternative to the clear failings of the current system.

It’s been a deadly month in Manchester, and Mosul. The war on terror has failed again, with more terror and less security around the world and innocents dead in Britain and in Syria and Iraq. Western air strikes caused another ‘deadliest month for civilians’ in Syria (225 dead, including 36 women and 44 children) and more than 105 civilians killed in Iraq in recent tallies, joined by children victims among the 22 dead in Manchester.

Various studies quantify the failure of the war on terror, and provide evidence of a direct link between the war against terror and terror itself. Research suggests that the more money is spent, and the more troops deployed, the more terror attacks occur. The west is in a perpetual war, fighting an elusive and amorphous enemy which it helps to create. The results are dead civilian men, women and children on all sides.

In ‘Measuring the Effectiveness of America’s War on Terror’, Eric Goepner reported that 80% of the variation in terror attacks between 2001-13 was attributable to US military spending and troop numbers. For every $US billion spent, and 1000 troops deployed, the number of terror attacks worldwide multiplied by 19 times. Countries invaded by the US subsequently had 143x more terrorism attacks than those not invaded by the US. Countries the subject of US drone strikes had around 395x more terror attacks than those who weren’t. There have been more Islamic inspired terrorism attacks, more Americans killed in terrorism both at home and abroad, and more terrorism attacks worldwide since the war on terror began, than before.

The war on terror has been going almost 16 years, cost America alone up to $US4 trillion, 7000 US military lives, and has seen up to two million service people deployed far from home. US / Coalition forces are currently engaged in occupation, war and / or armed conflict in at least eight Muslim states. There they are often seen as foreign occupying forces, their presence and tactics spread fear, political instability, trauma, grievance and destruction at the barrel of Apache helicopters. Their actions provide fertile ground for alienation, resentment, anger, and recruitment of new terrorists with nothing to lose. The war on terror provides excuses to murder.

The perpetrator of the appalling recent attack in Manchester that killed 22 concert goers including children and teenagers was an English resident. But according to his sister he was motivated by revenge. She said Salmen Abedi “…saw children, Muslim children, dying everywhere”. “He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and wanted revenge for injustices inflicted against Muslims”.

Indeed, research shows terror acts are often motivated by revenge and to correct grievance or injustice. But just as the victims of the war on terror are often innocent bystanders, so are the victims of terror itself; civilian casualties of armies, and of terrorists / insurgents; common targets and collateral damage.

Campaigning in the British election has resumed after a brief hiatus to mark the Manchester bombing. Jeremy Corbyn is using the opportunity to observe the failure of the war on terror to prevent terror attacks. He noted the links between British wars abroad and terrorism at home. The Government Security Minister Ben Wallace predictably said Corbyn’s comments were inappropriate and crassly timed. It’s expected that incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May will benefit in the polls for her ‘pitch perfect’, ‘stable and strong’ response to the recent attack.

Anne Applebaum writing in the Washington Post points out that hard line government responses to terrorism just lead to more radicalisation and violence, not less. She gives the response to the IRA as an example for the UK. Manchester is no stranger to the effects of that. Applebaum says rather than reactionary, divisive sloganeering in response to extremist violence, long term solutions that rebuild international co-operation, community values, solidarity and support are what’s required. At the conclusion of his pessimistic assessment of the war on terror, Goepner suggests a complete rethink of the war on terror approach.

This week’s New Zealand Herald had an article about a British SAS sniper killing an ISIS sniper from 2.4 km away by shooting him in the throat. It was portrayed as a victory of man and machine, a real man with a real weapon, fighting a righteous cause, almost doing “God’s work”. It was reported as one of the most difficult kills in the regiment’s history using the world’s most powerful rifle. On the one hand, the media carries uncritical reports of murderous violence in foreign countries on the part of coalition forces. On the other hand, it makes mileage out of senseless murder in Manchester.

The war on terror has desensitised the western world to senseless waste of life and acts of arbitrary justice in the Middle East, and hypersensitised us to terrorism risks at home.

This month’s civilian deaths in the west and the Middle East show the capacity for human evil. But the compassion and solidarity in Manchester also show the flip side human capacity for compassion and kindness. Support, love, a shared sense of sadness and grief were manifest in the aftermath of the bomb attack. At the end of a minute’s silence in a Manchester town square to mark the lives of the bombing victims, the crowd spontaneously supported a rendition of the Oasis song ‘Don’t look back in anger’. The woman who led the sing along said “we can’t be looking backward to what happened. We have to look forward to the future”. It’s that spirit, that courage, that compassion that will see an end to alienation, terror and radicalism, not the resort to violence that kills innocents everywhere.

New Zealand farmers are out of step. As a developed agricultural nation selling our produce and our brand to the world, our companies should be among those showing social responsibility in refusing to buy rock phosphate fertiliser from Moroccan occupied Western Sahara.

Some of the biggest previous importers of Western Saharan phosphate have withdrawn their trade because the Moroccan controlled supply has failed due diligence tests. Companies from Australia, Lithuania (the world’s hitherto second biggest importer), Scandinavia and the US have all stopped buying stolen Western Saharan rock phosphate.

That leaves NZ farmer fertiliser co-operatives Ravensdown and Ballance AgriNutrients among only nine companies worldwide who continue to support Morocco’s illegal occupation through purchase of rock phosphate. This means New Zealand farmers are complicit in exploiting the resources of the local Saharawis, condoning both the occupation of land, the appropriation of their resources, and injustices inflicted upon them.

New Zealand’s intensive agriculture requires intensive fertiliser, to be successful. A 2010 figure estimated that NZ used one million tonnes of phosphate per annum and we’re highly dependent on imported rock phosphate to sustain the industry. But New Zealand agriculture has long come at the cost of indigenous communities and their self-determination – observe Nauru.

Ravensdown and Ballance are the (only) two member companies of the Fertiliser Association of New Zealand and supply 98% of all fertiliser used in New Zealand, a $2billion market share. The Association says they’re ‘aware of the territorial dispute in the non-self-governing territory of the Western Sahara’; An invasion, followed by illegal occupation for 40 years and human rights violations as established by the International Court of Justice and the European Court. But the Association says ‘that’s no reason not to use rock phosphate from the area’. Federated Farmers say ‘NZ needs the phosphate, and the price is likely to go up if the Western Sahara supply was taken off the market”. The Ravensdown Chief Executive links access to Western Sahara phosphate with social stability, warning ‘if it wasn’t available, then globally we could have social unrest, because we wouldn’t be able to produce the food we need’.

Morocco and Western Sahara produce three quarters of the world’s phosphate exports, and phosphate is essential for plant growth. The implication is that because global, and New Zealand agriculture in particular, is dependent on international phosphate trade from a few sites, including Western Sahara, we should accept current oppression as collateral damage. It’s the price we pay for our meat and milk.
And even though the Fertiliser Association say their trade isn’t in disregard of the interests and wishes of the local population, that’s not what the Polisario say – and they should know. The Polisario are the exiled representative body and liberation front of the oppressed Saharawis. The Saharawis are the only people in Africa who haven’t been decolonised, according to Michael Dobson, a Global Politics Doctoral Student. Their country is segregated by ‘the Berm’ a 1500km series of walls, into Morocco-occupied Western Sahara, and the area controlled by the Polisario (mostly ‘economically ‘useless’, heavily mined and almost uninhabited’). Between 90,000-120,000 Saharawis are concentrated in refugee camps in Algeria, facing food insecurity while we live in a land of milk and cheese produced at their expense.

400,000 tonnes of phosphate from Western Sahara are imported into New Zealand every year. The recent seizure of a bulk carrier shipment of phosphate intended for Ballance AgriNutrient’s customers which is 8% of New Zealand’s annual demand, and worth $5million, puts the wholesale price per tonne at just $94.

Chatham Rock Phosphate who unsuccessfully applied to the Environmental Protection Authority to mine the resource from the deep seabed off the Chatham Rise, claim that the seizure of the Western Saharan phosphate shows their application ‘was right all along”. That application was declined because of its potential adverse effects on the marine environment.

Ravensdown says Moroccan phosphate is better than others because of its lower cadmium and other toxic element content. Everyone with an interest in the continued exploitation of Western Saharan phosphate, wants it to continue. However, the Saharawi people and their democratically elected governors in the Polisario should be the ones to determine that future for themselves. A long-promised referendum on self-rule, and an end to Morocco’s illegal territorial occupation might well improve conditions for peace and security, and therefore trade, of this precious resource.

Rock phosphate takes between 10-15 million years to form. There’s no synthetic alternative. About 1.5million tonnes are exported from Western Sahara each year. It’s an agricultural white gold. And since at least the 1960s, we’ve been applying it on New Zealand hills, valleys and soils, from where it runs into our lakes and rivers, like there’s no tomorrow.

Unfortunately, as with many agricultural inputs, phosphate is undervalued economically, socially and environmentally. It’s clear that farmers and their fertiliser interests, don’t want to face up to the humanitarian implications of rock phosphate imports from Western Sahara. But this isn’t just an input problem in some far away country that no-one’s really heard of much. It’s an output problem for the New Zealand environment.

Phosphate leaching from farmland makes a significant detrimental impact on aquatic receiving environments. Eutrophication of rivers and streams is a direct consequence of nutrient overload, and this significantly due to agricultural runoff. 34% of imported phosphate is used on dairy farms and in the Waikato region, dairying alone, accounts for 42% of phosphate entering waterways from 22% of the land area. Dairy farming in four Rotorua lake catchments is estimated to leach more than 4 tonnes of phosphate per annum. We waste too much of the nutrients we depend on, with long term harmful effects.

It’s not rock phosphate from the Chatham Rise that we need as an alternative to Western Saharan supplies. We need a different agricultural model that doesn’t demand intensive fertiliser inputs that come with a human rights abuse price tag. We need agriculture that doesn’t reduce ecosystems to monocultures, and that doesn’t choke our rivers and streams to death with wasted fertiliser resource.

We need a model that avoids, and rectifies the polluted, toxic legacies of nutrient overload to date, for the sake of future generations.

Federated Farmers, the Fertiliser Association, and their constituent parts continue to inflict self-interested, market driven externalities on communities and the environment both here and in Western Sahara. As usual, social and environmental injustices are linked. Just as our milk and cheese and meat are linked to nutrient pollution in our waterways, so are they all linked to oppression in Western Sahara.

Electoral politics is about practicing the art of symbolism, and no more so than in election year. Reactive and populist political successes, aggravating and then preying on peoples’ fears in the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign, show how unfortunately ripe ‘mature’ western democracies are for knee jerk, xenophobic responses to complex, structural problems. It’s the time and the era for political discourses that reinforce prejudices and divisions in society to reinforce the impression of divisions in politics even when the larger agenda shared among political parties is the same. At present in New Zealand we have a rush to the right to see which political party can distinguish itself from the others by blaming immigration and immigrants the most. And strange quarters, like the Labour Party, are coming up ‘Trumps’.

To paraphrase Malcolm X, if we’re not careful, we’ll end up hating the oppressed and loving the oppressors, and that’s the real risk with the anti-immigration foment here in New Zealand and around the Western World.

Instead of blaming the government and the neoliberal capitalist paradigm, for inequality, housing shortages and high costs, and low wages, we blame immigrant workers from the global reserve army of labour come here looking for better lives for themselves and their children. In Europe in an ultimate injustice, refugees from the ravaged Middle East get the blame. Here, some of our immigrants are from the world’s under-developed centres of poverty, working for a pittance because it’s more than they’d make back home. Think of the Filipino care workers, doing humbling, humane and hard work through long hours, for as low as $15.75 an hour, looking after our elderly. At the same time, we blame ‘them’, those ‘others’, ‘immigrants’, for working in servitude, for blocking our roads and buying our houses. (Even if we have several cars and houses ourselves).

We blame immigrants for occupying low paid jobs even though they might have high skills they can’t deploy sometimes because of prejudice against them. We blame immigrants for undercutting New Zealand wages instead of blaming the government and business sectors for a lack of industry relative minimum pay rates, like the old award system. We should be striving for no exploitation of any workers, not just ‘Kiwi’ workers, but including those from other countries come to live here, work here, or supplement the New Zealand work force.

Instead of blaming immigrants and immigration for Auckland’s traffic congestion and infrastructure deficits, we should hold current and previous governments and political parties, and their broader economic agenda, to account, for privatising assets, selling public services, withholding funding tools and investment in the physical and social infrastructure necessary for any city’s maintenance and growth. It’s not immigrants’ fault thousands of litres of partly treated sewage are washed into our harbours every rainstorm. It’s not immigrants’ fault we don’t have a decent public transport network.

It’s not immigrants’ fault that we’re a city of cars.

Statistics New Zealand reports that immigration is mainly driven out of Australia, China and South Africa. As well as seasonal workers from the Pacific, many immigrants are international students, ‘friendly state’ working holiday visitors as part of reciprocal ‘OE’ agreements, spouses and family of new New Zealand residents. Just as we welcome the right to have working holidays in those ‘friendly’ countries, to live with those we have fallen in love with, to learn and even live overseas, so people from the rest of the world, look to those opportunities here.

Manipulating fears of an Asian invasion, it’s the immigrants who don’t look like us, or talk like us that are portrayed as the greatest problem (“Asian drivers”, “Chinese speculators”, “Filipinos taking jobs in Christchurch and on dairy farms in the South Island”). Different physical characteristics or ways of living and dressing set non-European immigrants apart and make them obvious targets for racism. We’re happy to eat ‘exotic’ food, but don’t want those people living in our communities, or really, in our country. They should ‘assimilate’, ‘become kiwis’, ‘they’re destroying the Kiwi way of life’ – for ‘real kiwis’, and themselves, according to Jacinda Ardern, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

But in the year to June, 2016, 1/5 of immigrant arrivals were from Australia. 2/3 of them were returning Kiwis. And even though Auckland is feeling the pressure of population growth, the squeeze in Auckland is from a mix of causes, not just a single simplistic one. In 2012 we wanted Kiwis to stay in NZ, and come home. The 70,000 net population increase over the last three years is unprecedented, an artefact of economic and political convenience and circumstance, but to keep it in perspective, that equates to only a 1.5% population increase per annum. We’re already one of the most urbanised countries in the world in terms of proportion to the national population, and amid a long term and global trend toward urbanisation. And as our biggest city of opportunity, Auckland is naturally the main destination for internal migration too.

In this week’s announcement that Labour would cut up to 50,000 immigrants a year, by ‘going after’ work visas in particular, the party left unanswered, questions about who they’d cut. A subject for further policy announcements apparently, or maybe it’s policy rhetoric on the hoof, because the basis for those figures is unclear, the number is a bit fluid, it could be just a ‘breather’ to give infrastructure time to ‘catch up’. It might just apply to Auckland. And how would we know when the infrastructure has ‘caught up’? If it’s like past government promises of investing in public transport infrastructure to a decent level when the roading network is finished, then it’s not something we will ever reach an end state for, it’s like a mirage, a nirvana, a convenient story we are told just to get through.

Immigrants have become a scapegoat and an excuse for not even considering broader political and economic causes of Auckland’s problems. Broader workplace controls and minimum wage settings, levelling the playing field in investment property tax incentives, discussions about population growth per se, are all too complex, too challenging, un-necessary, when you can just blame immigrants for everything, and hopefully, probably, gain votes from middle New Zealand at the same time.
New Zealand’s early oppressive immigrant settler and colonial narrative was one where the dominant Western culture was portrayed as the optimum, and only desirable one. Capitalism, Christianity and colonialism were enlightened forces of development. Even still, if you’re of white European descent, you’ve got more chance of being a ‘real kiwi’. But New Zealand, and Auckland in particular, is a far more diverse, multi-cultural, and richer society than they once were because of recent immigration based diversification. But that original, colonial immigrant, capitalist narrative is dominant still. It’s a victor’s rhetoric, “we’re here now, we’re the righteous (white) occupants of this land, and the legitimate regime. We’ve made this society in our image, and unless you look like us, act like us, and accept the cultural and economic rules we impose, we’ll marginalise you, your beliefs and your way of life.” “What’s more, we’ll blame you for society’s ills’.

Instead of standing of the side of the cultural and capitalist oppressor and adopting its discourse of exclusion and the antagonism of difference, thinking workers of New Zealand, and elsewhere, should show solidarity with other workers and stand for better standards of living and workplace rights. Don’t blame the victim when the system itself is the problem.

The dropping of the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ in remote Afghanistan was “another successful military event” according to US President Donald Trump, even before it was known how much damage was done and how many insurgents were killed.

The Mother of All Bombs in question, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast or MOAB, is custom made and cost $16 million each, with additional development costs of $316million for the 20 in existence. This is the first time this huge conventional weapon has been used in active military conflict, and is the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever used in ‘combat’. This week’s MOAB deployment was a generally unexpected intensification of force in Afghanistan, and killed just 36 suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters in three remote cave tunnels near the Pakistan border.

Donald Trump has vowed to ‘stamp out Islamic State militants once and for all’, a license to keep bombing all over the place, forever, and a similar pledge of many regime leaders before him in Afghanistan, ‘the graveyard of empires’, who have failed too. Apparently though, there are only an estimated 600-1500 IS fighters in Afghanistan, though Taliban fighters have recently regained significant ground from US, Nato and Afghani forces. All the same, the Mother of All Bombs was dropped in an area where a 37-year-old American Green Beret soldier was killed by an Improvised Explosive Device last week. American deaths will be atoned. But that’s a lot of money and a lot of fire power to avenge the death of a soldier. At $16million a bomb, that’s ‘overkill’.

The MOAB is 10 metres long, weighs 10,000 kilos and contains 8,000 kilos of explosives, compared with a conventional bomb weighing about 250kg. Despite an air burst blast impact a mile outwards in each direction, the MOAB has been found to be not ‘indiscriminate’ under the Law of Armed Conflict. That’s because it’s launched from a cargo plane with a parachute, and guided by GPS to within eight metres of its target. The blast is designed to collapse tunnels and bunkers and ‘obliterate enemy personnel’. It has the potential to cause ‘colossal collateral damage’ which is apparently why it has previously never been used. Developed at the start of the Iraq war, it was designed to deter and intimidate the enemy through an overwhelming display of force, a weapon of shock and awe.

After the MOAB was dropped this week, President Trump commended the military, and suggested the recent intensification of force is a positive result of giving the military more latitude to act independently. He approves of the action, but doesn’t necessarily authorise the act. However, Trump’s critiques say he was looking for a distraction from impeachment threats and scandals involving Russia. Military observers say if the deployment of this bomb was really about Islamic State, it would have targeted Syria or Iraq, not Aghanistan where IS are a recently established, and barely credible, force.

Other observers agree there is nothing random about the timing of this unprecedented show of conventional military firepower, given the gearing up of tensions between the US and China, North Korea, Russia and Syria. This is sabre rattling at its most profound. Professor John Blaxland, the Head of Strategic and Defence Studies at the Australian National University, said “this increasing threshold of violence” can only have knock on, unintended consequences, creating greater instability and international uncertainty, but still fails to deal with core issues causing failed states, anti-Western antagonism, and anarchy in the Middle East and around the world.

So far, 3,500 Western coalition service members have been killed in military engagement in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghani civilian lives have been lost. The US invasion cost $686billion as of 2014. Support for the Afghani army has cost the US $60billion. $110billion has been spent on reconstruction. Yet there’s no more ‘peace’ in Afghanistan than there ever was, and the security situation remains precarious.

During the American election just months ago, Donald Trump glibly stated his military strategy regarding IS; ‘bomb the shit out of them’. Using the Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan flexes American muscle and shows just how willing its military leaders are to use their own weapons of mass destruction to lead and respond to the violent pack. What further terror this will cause, within current theatres of war, and on home soil, remains to be seen.

The new Sheriff is patrolling the global street, pulling out his guns at every turn. Unconcerned about overkill, a more secure world through superior American firepower seems unlikely.

Nicky Hager and John Stephenson’s new book, Hit and Run, claims the NZ SAS carried out a revenge raid on an Afghani village which killed six and injured 15 civilians, including women and children. In response, the jaded and inhumane say ‘civilians die in war’, ‘human collateral damage is inevitable’.
Indeed, where disproportionate force is involved, and peasant villagers are blasted in their homes by Apache helicopter gunships, attacked by SAS soldiers, have their houses set on fire, and are bombed again, the chances of civilian deaths are unarguably high. In that sort of retributive, indiscriminate, misguided ‘war’, with poorly defined ‘enemies’, in a country used to foreign invading forces, the chances of both civilian and soldier’s deaths are high.

But to consider this ‘collateral damage’ acceptable, to cover it up, deny it, to refuse to accept responsibility, is what leads to the radicalisation of surviving civilians, the creation of insurgents, and the laying of improvised explosive devices on dusty roads that kill soldiers from those ‘invading forces’ in a vicious cycle. Indiscriminate displays of superior western weaponry, wealth and fire power, ill-directed at strategic level, (why were western troops in Afghanistan again?), and ill-directed at the level of specific targets; this violent domination; this is what also leads to greater insecurity on the streets of London, Paris, New York, and more. Civilians killed on dirt roads in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, are as undeserving victims as those on the streets in the West. But both are victims of Western imperialism in their own way.

More than 26,000 civilian deaths from war related violence were documented in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. Three-year-old Fatima and the others killed in the apparent SAS-led raid in 2010, were among at least 440 civilians killed by Western forces that year. Last year alone, there were at least 596 civilians killed by foreign troops in Afghanistan, and the year before, there were 828. And then there are the ongoing revelations of cover ups of even more. On February 12 this year, the US military carried out a raid on an Afghani village which killed two pregnant women and three other victims, and then, allegedly, tried to cover up the crime and blame family members for the atrocity.
General Stanley McChrystal, Head of Staff for all foreign troops in Afghanistan, has vowed to reduce the number of civilian deaths from international forces. He’s only been in the job since late last northern spring, but spends some time travelling around the country apologising for civilians dead, in efforts to diffuse feelings of anger and revenge.

Dr Wayne Mapp Minister of Defence at the time of the disastrous NZ-led raids, defends the New Zealand SAS and their role in alleged civilian deaths in the 2010 bombing ‘fiasco’. He seems to be of the school of thought that ‘shit happens in war, innocent people die’. He says the raids were ‘a counter insurgency operation, so there were always going to be civilians around’, and ‘bear in mind… insurgents… it’s not like a full-time job, wearing a uniform, you can be a farmer by day and an insurgent by night’. But evidence suggests there were no ‘insurgents’ in these villages, just humble villagers, by day and by night. Dr Mapp indicates a view, that it’s so hard to tell insurgents and civilians apart, it’s ok to summarily kill them – they’re not full time soldiers, different rules apply. Conversely, of course, a greater injustice was done to Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell, precisely because he was a soldier, in the line of duty, serving his country. Somehow. (Though, why was NZ in Afghanistan, again? What national interest was being served there? Why really, did Lt Tim O’Donnell die?)

Apparently, the US armed forces consider most military aged male Afghanis as ‘potential combatants’. And like that old story about ‘if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’, if you think that every male aged from about 13 to 83 is a potential insurgent, most men will be considered fair target. It’s that attitude, with a strong dose of vengeance, that also seems to permeate NZ’s SAS, the Defence Minister, and maybe even the Prime Minister of the time.

But the allegations that the SAS left injured men, women and children to suffer and die after the sniper and gunship raid, when it would have been clear these were no insurgents, are chilling. And to return 10 days after this attack, and demolish their basic houses, in the process of rebuilding, and to turn over a suspect for torture by the Americans, indicates an ethic and attitude unsuited for civilised society.

Claims that these allegations are ‘nothing new’, are irrelevant. An unaddressed injustice has no use-by date, or time limit, especially with allegations of this import. It’s bad enough that NZ troops are even in Afghanistan, and Iraq, supposedly rebuilding the mess most recently created by western force. Transparent due process is required to establish to what degree the charges are true. Though, given ‘western / victor’s justice’, and an evident culture of secrecy, self-justifying defences are more likely than an open and objective inquiry.

Donald Trump Junior criticised London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan for previously saying that terror attacks are part and parcel of living in a big city. But war criminals are in charge of western nations and their budgets – they’re Prime Ministers, Governor Generals and military chiefs, with little or no regard for internationally accepted rules of law, or commonly agreed principles of justice such as proportionality, due process, fair treatment of non-combatants and redress for civilian casualties. Western forces are in these wrecked countries on spurious grounds. Civilian casualties, ‘collateral damage’ are therefore as inevitable in our Western cities, as in the poor impoverished Eastern proxy sites of international war. The treatise of war that takes an eye for an eye, leaves the whole world blind.

General McChrystal won forgiveness by surrendering two sheep to the family of those killed by US troops on February 12. The family said they felt driven to become suicide bombers because of the death of their daughters. But under Afghani tradition, the gifting of sheep as an admission of guilt and a plea for forgiveness, can’t be denied. The need for retribution is annulled. In New Zealand, despite the evidence, our Government is ignoring the need for investigation. We haven’t seen a glimpse of willingness to consider any prospect of guilt, or any need for forgiveness, let alone the offer of sheep.

The media exposed a ‘scandal’ this week that millions of eggs have been sold to discerning consumers as free range, that were actually just repackaged eggs from caged hens. Consumer rights have been breached. False claims have been made. Consumers and the system have been rorted. But the dominant narrative, that this is primarily a betrayal of consumer rights and confidence, misses the point.

What really matters is that millions of hens are treated like industrial producers pumping out eggs in inhumane conditions, but price is a more important factor for most New Zealanders than animal welfare. The issue isn’t just that yet another ‘rogue operator’ has been caught out lying, exploiting consumers’ good intentions. The question isn’t just, how many ‘rogue operators’ does it take until we realise we have a systemic problem. The real point is that we support an industry that keeps hens in tiny cages in the worst case, most common scenario, and that barn and even ‘free range’ hens may never see the sky or have real opportunity to carry out usual behaviours like foraging and bathing in the dust.

New Zealanders consume about a billion eggs a year, and eggs from caged hens make up about 75% of the market. About 5% of laying hens live in barns, and about 19% are what’s vaguely ‘free range’. Organic eggs make up about 1% of egg sales. That means most egg buying New Zealanders don’t care enough or can’t afford to pay more for eggs that support hens’ wellbeing, natural living and freedom.

This week’s scandal has arisen because a major egg supplier was making a conservative estimate of $14,000 extra a week from buying caged hen eggs and repackaging and on-selling the eggs as free range. It’s a breach of faith. An economic lie.

Consumers had been led to believe that by buying free range eggs they really were supporting better quality of life for laying hens. But this week’s revelations have shown that not only is there scope for cynical marketing by unscrupulous egg traders and dealers, but also that loose definitions mean there’s no guarantee of a good life for hens even on ‘free range’ farms, even if you wanted to ‘do the right thing’, by hens and paid more for it. Not only are your eggs not necessarily free range when they’re labelled as such, but your hens are likely to suffer regardless. Even if you think you’re buying free range eggs, you may not be. Free range eggs may come from caged hens, and what is generally classed as free range can come with adverse conditions for hens anyway.

Like with a lot of consumer certification schemes, even the SPCA’s ‘Blue Tick’ accreditation offers less real assurance or quality control than you’d hope. The SPCA advises consumers to buy carefully, because the term ‘free range can be misleading and doesn’t necessarily lead to enhanced animal welfare’. The SPCA endorses barn egg mass production if the farm ‘meets high animal welfare standards’. According to the SPCA, in Blue Tick certified barns, ‘hens roam freely inside, they have perches to roost on and space to stretch their wings. Nesting boxes provide a quiet space for egg laying and there is floor litter for scratching in’. But Rob Darby from the Free Range Egg NZ Association, (FRENZ) says that egg ‘farms’ accredited by the SPCA are often at industrial scale. With 5-10,000 hens in a barn, and given chicken social structure, the animals are unlikely to get outside, there’s likely to be conflict in the pecking order, there’s overstocking, limited space, insufficient housing, disease, stress and fighting, cruel treatment such as beak trimming, and the health and wellbeing of hens is compromised. The SPCA gets a royalty from every ‘Blue tick’ egg sold, which can also undermine the perceived integrity of the scheme.

When responsibility is shared, there’s a greater chance it will be abrogated, and so it is with the latest revelations about egg misrepresentation. MPI says consumer promises such as ‘free range’ should be upheld by the Commerce Commission via the Fair Trading Act and consumer rights. But according to the Commerce Commission, other than the cases where clear acts of fraud occur, there’s no recourse for labeling eggs as free range, even if the hens never actually get outside because of the sheer number of chickens in one place. As Rob Darby from FRENZ says, just because hens have ‘the opportunity’ to range freely, doesn’t mean they can or do.

In reality, most hens in New Zealand are currently kept in cages, not in barns or free ranging. Under duress, the Government has been forced to change the standards of welfare for chickens, so caged laying hens will be prohibited after 2022.

The Egg Producers Federation are looking at implementing a stamp so eggs can be traced back to source, and production methods verified. Our egg demand continues to rise. Our population-scale egg consumption helps drive massive egg production. But industrial mass production isn’t the only way. FRENZ eggs for example come from many small farms rather than few huge ones as in the conventional model. Backyard chickens make great company and create real quality eggs.

But until proper industry standards are created that provide demonstrable quality of life for hens, where common terms like ‘free range’ conform to a consistent definition, and which creates a level playing field and criteria and therefore pricing structure for eggs, most consumers will continue to follow the money and buy the cheapest eggs on the market, irrespective of the life of hens.

The fact that most of the billion eggs produced and sold in New Zealand are generated through the cruel mistreatment and industrial commodification of hens, is a greater issue than that a relatively smaller percentage of them were mislabeled as free range when in fact they were from cages.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/03/18/industrial-scale-egg-production-is-cruel-thats-the-real-problem/feed/10The whole world is burninghttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/02/18/the-whole-world-is-burning/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/02/18/the-whole-world-is-burning/#commentsFri, 17 Feb 2017 20:59:01 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=82118
‘On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree’ wrote US Poet Laureate WS Merwin. Indeed, sometimes it feels like the whole world is burning, and to act in the spirit of hope is to plant a whole forest.

An everyday review of news headlines reports fires across the globe – record temperatures, drought. Australia’s a classic example of an extreme environment made even more extreme by both local land and energy use, and anthropogenic climate change at global level. Unfortunately for Australia, as one of the worst contributors per capita to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions through its reliance on coal fired power generation, its chickens are coming home to roost. It’s more surprising, and a scary portent, that the Port Hills of Christchurch have been aflame this week, along with parts of Hawke’s Bay. Many of us are used to seeing the backdrop to Christchurch dry as cardboard in summer, but when it’s on fire and burning houses, you realise human environmental impacts and climate change got real.

A huge mass of ice sheet is about to cleave off Antarctica, and last year, the Arctic was up to 20 degrees warmer than in the more stable recent past. Even the ocean’s deepest places, the Mariana and Kermadec trenches, are host to the world’s worst chemicals, at a scale equal to the world’s most polluted industrial sites, according to scientists in the Guardian. A news report showed a can of spam on the seabed 5km deep. The crustaceans from the deepest trenches contain 10 times the industrial pollution of the average earthworm. Recent reports calculated that there are about 6000 pieces of rubbish per km2 even in the Arctic.

At various locations around the world, sudden tree collapse is killing hundreds of thousands of trees – whole forests. Manmade deforestation of course kills a whole lot more. Then there’s the very finite nature of global species, and depopulation – extinction – of much of the world’s wild living wonder. Leopards are just one of the recent high profile species added to the long ‘going, going, gone’ list of endangered biodiversity in the current era. Previously common animals like the polar bear, hippo and gazelle are now threatened. Some scientists reckon extinctions will peak around 2060, because there will be hardly any more species to lose. We’re losing them before many are even discovered. Once species are lost, they’re gone forever.

Meanwhile, closer to home, swimming at many of Auckland’s beaches poses a health risk because of our unreformed habit of flushing toilet waste into streams and harbours. South Island lakes and rivers have dried up into algal cess pits devoid of life, and neither ‘wadeable’, or ‘swimmable’, diminished because of our habit of denuding landscapes, using land right up to rivers’ edges, indirectly flushing agricultural waste into streams and rivers.

Even if the many perpetrators of these environmental and social crimes had the best intentions, these issues would take as long to repair as they have taken to create – about since the industrial revolution, and especially since the second world war. Halting our destruction of nature would require champions, sacrifice from most of us, ‘buy-in’, major long-term commitment, action toward reducing environmental harm. But we’re in a profit driven economy where land and water and life are commodified and at the same time, go largely unpriced, undervalued, invisible; gifts from the world to the capitalists. Repair, would require a whole different model.
The whole planet seems overpopulated with people but wealth and health are distributed unevenly. Anger, fear and greed are fostered by ‘leaders’ in the media and society. What’s the future for human and non-human life and ecosystems?

Today’s problems are systemic and seem intractable. The ‘human asteroid’ is on a full speed collision course with a sustainable future. Human behaviour has caused a tragic distortion to the biosphere; the Anthropocene, now in a ‘great acceleration’ of change.

Donald Trump’s election success is becoming more of a reality by the day, and he gets inaugurated this weekend. The internet is full of rightful speculation on what his term or terms will bring. There’s lots of fear and loathing. I also fear and loathe the man. His lifestyle, flashy trappings, arrogance and extreme wealth have long reflected all that’s crass about big business and its excesses, particularly in America. But is Trump such a radical, rogue, and dangerous new President as many of us worry, or is the new President just like every other President, with a wild card style, but in fact, just a modified, status quo?

Trump’s abrasive style and irreverence for established policies and protocols looks to be destabilising at global level. He has us thinking that he’ll be a real threat to the existing fragile international peace between nuclear capable superpowers. He’ll make a gaff, or a wrong statement, commit some diplomatic faux pas, and China or Russia will push the red button. There’s a madman (mad men, plural) in control of the planet’s future. Trump’s climate change views, taken to the extreme offer the same existentialist threat.

But as opposed to the antagonism between Russia and America under Barak Obama, Trump and Putin are comrades! Indeed, there are many similarities between them. Trump has a better existing relationship with Putin than the previous President, and that can only be ‘so far, so good’ for international affairs. Under Obama, tensions in the Crimea and Ukraine have resulted in massive militarisation, with Russian, and unprecedented ‘battle ready’ American and NATO troops concentrated in the region. If through their own brand of diplomatic relations, Putin and Trump manage to take that conflict off the boil, then all the better.
Meanwhile, the risk of increasing antagonism between America and China is a clear one, with or without Trump at the helm. Again, under Obama’s watch, there’s been growing hostile inflammatory behaviour from both countries protecting their perceived righteous self-interests in the South China Sea. America are down there buzzing the place with their military hardware, enforcing a self-appointed jurisdiction far from home. American geopolitical supremacy is at stake, but who doesn’t see the changing of that guard already? And America has to protect its, and our, trade routes after all.

Trump has quickly and flippantly but maybe even deliberately rejected / ignored / or been ignorant of established conventions by accepting a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s Premier upon his election. “Donald, didn’t you know about the ‘One China’ policy?” “For diplomatic purposes, Taiwan does not exist”. Who’s briefing this guy already? Is he even briefable? And who can blame him if he resists the inertia and agenda of the establishment anyway, in foreign affairs, diplomacy and the CIA? As Donald himself pointed out, America can sell $2billion military weapons to Taiwan but the new President can’t accept a phone call? So at very least he deserves credit for showing up the hypocrisies in the strange dark world of politics, diplomacy and arms sales.

In reality, neither Trump, nor Obama, or any President or single elected official really ‘runs’ the country. The industrial-military machine is bigger than any of them. And capitalism is too big to fail. There’s always an argument against unbridled power in the hands of one leader, especially when they’re seemingly arbitrary actors in charge of nuclear armed states. But we were at such risk of mutually assured destruction under Reagan (despite détente) as under Clinton, and Obama.

After all the farewell speeches and oratory, it’s like there’s a mood to nominate Barak Obama for Sainthood. Remembering of course that he won a Nobel peace prize, almost just for being elected. The world is less secure, and tens of millions of people have been effected by wars in the Middle East perpetrated by America after the last eight years of Obama’s reign. According to John Pilger, in 2016 alone Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. He says under Obama’s rule, the US has extended secret “special forces” operations to 138 countries, covering 70 per cent of the world’s population.

As a result of Obama’s own style of war-mongering, civilians in both the Eastern and western world feel less safe than ever before. There’s nothing like a drone strike that takes out your family to radicalise citizens. So now acts of ‘terror’ on domestic soil bring wars closer to home for the general public. Conflicts won’t just be contained to some ‘foreign field’, or dusty bazaar any more. ‘Terrorist’ dissidents wage their own form of warfare on new western battlefields that are public places too – nightclubs, concerts, train stations, streets, partly provoked by the destruction of their own homes and communities, houses and plazas by American and allied weaponry.

Politics is the ‘art of the possible’ but Obama’s agenda was also partly set for him, constrained and defined by established military interventions, foreign policy and investment. These commitments were bigger than any Presidential prerogative and overrode any more noble ambitions. But in turn, Obama has committed future Presidents such as Trump, to trillions more military expenses in the future.

Obama has been as culpable and corrupt as the Bushes (after all, as a friend of mine says, Obama was just a black Bush), and so on, as with Clinton, Reagan, …Nixon, Kennedy…. The engine of that good ship America is a corporate capitalist, military-industrial one, and all any President can do is try to steer it, but he won’t and can’t, sink the ship.
I’m sure history will come to judge Trump as a wild card, who made the world less safe, fair and sustainable than before. We have reason to be afraid. But that’s just a modified status quo, not a departure from the American norm.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/01/19/trump-wild-card-a-modified-status-quo/feed/44Christmas is the opiate of the masses in a world that’s madhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/12/24/christmas-is-the-opiate-of-the-masses-in-a-world-thats-mad/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/12/24/christmas-is-the-opiate-of-the-masses-in-a-world-thats-mad/#commentsFri, 23 Dec 2016 23:54:29 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=79235

If religion is the opiate of the masses, then it’s no wonder semi-religious consumerist celebrations like Christmas incite frenzied and irrational buying and eating. We’re addicted to modern Christmas rituals involving spending madly, as much as religious iconography. Christmas celebrations these days successfully incorporate historic religious and pagan traditions, and are now well adapted to Western consumer excess. Christmas spending is next to Godliness don’t you know. Santa is the ultimate salesman encouraging ever more spending to prove love of family and friends. Consumerism is the new religious icon in the Christmas story.

To be an atheist, and anti-consumer at Christmas time is to be an alien in a hectic mass production and consumption world. There’s nothing wrong with the giving of gifts per se – in fact a gift economy could be an efficient and fair system. And it’s important to show love to those you care for. But as far as much of the gift giving goes, it would be sensible just to buy the stuff and send it directly to landfill. Cut out the middle man, the recipient of the gift, because our markets are saturated with plastic stuff made in China that is sometimes broken before we’ve finished the Christmas trifle. It’s a cynical reality that sees a booming market on Trade Me the day after Christmas for unwanted gifts. It’s even worse that shops discount their goods the day after Christmas but charge full price the day before. We’d all be better off spending time in the present with family and friends, rather than spending hard earned money on sometimes poor quality gifts that are surplus to need.

But Christmas is so much more than giving and eating, right? It’s the season of goodwill and peace to all men. Mainly men, that is, because usually women do a disproportionate amount of the stressful cooking, present buying and other responsibilities of Christmas. New Zealanders alone spend about $4.2 billion on Christmas – that’s a lot of shopping, a lot of money spent, often on credit, to meet ever increasing demands. And while kids are indoctrinated early into the Christmas culture, there is likely to be a continual stream of future shoppers to join the consumption chain too.

Around the world, Christmas is certainly no time for peace and goodwill. The bombs don’t stop nor are the children spared. Refugees in camps are likely to see out more than just one Christmas away from ‘home’, which probably no longer exists. In supposedly developed countries, homeless people, those in overcrowded accommodation, in poverty, stay homeless, poor, powerless, before Christmas, during, after.

Even the most naive Christmas tradition seems to be dwarfed by the capacity for human evil this year, especially close to the heart of where it all began. We’ve seen the destruction of ancient cities at the heart of Christianity. In the Biblical Christian birth story, there was no room at the inn for weary travelers in ancient Bethlehem that fateful night. And so today in continental Europe as well as more remote places like New Zealand, ‘there’s no room at the inn’, and refugees are rejected and resisted. There’ll be no peace in Palestine this Christmas. There’s been summary execution of civilians stranded between armies and rebels. Elsewhere, tensions are ramping up. A terrorist drives a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin. The Russian ambassador to Turkey is shot in the back, at an art show, by an off-duty policeman shouting ‘Allah Akbar, Remember Allepo, Remember Syria’. More refugees drowned crossing the Mediterranean this year than ever before, but there’s much less fuss. Donald Trump tweeted support for expanding the American nuclear arsenal and Putin apparently raised to the bait. Trump’s unpredictable policy makes the whole world a less safe place but he was democratically voted to lead the ‘Free World’.

It would be comforting to be able to believe in old institutions like religion, democracy, internationalism. But 2016 reminded us that the United Nations is ineffectual at forestalling war crimes. When Russian propaganda leaflets were dropped upon Syria that said ‘The world has abandoned you’, they were right. In 2016 we learned that democracy can deliver perverse and dangerous results. That many people would prefer nationalism over transnationalism. Instability is easy to create, stability, harder to restore. Across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the US and Western states, we have been reminded how unstable peace can be. That there are threats to it everywhere. A suspected terror attack in Melbourne has been thwarted, which would otherwise have targeted many busy sites, including a main city church, on Christmas day. Nothing is sacred. Society is fragile. So is truth, in this post-truth, fake news, double speak age.

And so is the climate. Yet again we had another year that was the hottest on record. The Arctic is melting. Seas are warming, corals are bleaching. Predictions remind us that before too long the fish in the oceans, the elephants, polar bears and more, will be gone.

This year, as usual, there’s not much to celebrate really. We should all strive to enjoy the good weather with an existentialist’s realism more than a quasi-religious denial and consumerist distraction. The world is dreadful, confusing, absurd, meaningless and mad. People can be very bad. And that hasn’t changed since before the birth of Christ.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/12/24/christmas-is-the-opiate-of-the-masses-in-a-world-thats-mad/feed/19Damage control better for business than for dolphins?https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/12/17/damage-control-better-for-business-than-for-dolphins/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/12/17/damage-control-better-for-business-than-for-dolphins/#commentsFri, 16 Dec 2016 21:21:58 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=79233

After years of fishing industry denial that their practices pose any harm to Maui dolphins, this week two significant New Zealand fishing companies announced they were aiming for Maui-safe fishing methods on the North Island West Coast by 2022.

For the first time, there’s an open acknowledgement from fishing industry heavyweights Sanfords and Moana NZ, that they’re setting and trawling nets in Maui dolphin habitat, putting them at risk, creating, by way of implication, a “conservation emergency”.

Maui dolphins are only found of the North Island’s West Coast – and there are only about 63 adults left. There’s no evidence of a ‘stabilised’ population as claimed by Minster of Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, and even if it had – at 63 that’s nothing to celebrate. Their cousins, Hector’s dolphins, found in both the North and South Islands, exist in genetically and geographically distinct sub-populations but have relatively less protection, and risk local and wider extinctions too.

The New Zealand fishing industry needed some positive spin after it suffered from major reputational damage throughout the year. Revelations from researchers and whistle blowers have exposed massive under-reporting of over-killing the ocean. Dolphin, sea bird, sea lion bycatch and unreported dumping of unwanted fish, captured on film and in catch records, have been denied by industry players and defended by the Government. International opprobrium from the world’s key conservation bodies has been consistent and strong – with New Zealand regularly condemned at the International Whaling Convention and the International Union of Conservation Networks (IUCN) for its lack of action in addressing the endangerment of Maui (and Hector’s) dolphins in the New Zealand fishing industry. International and domestic campaigns have highlighted the link between NZ fisheries and dolphin deaths. There have been international consumer boycotts. Public opinion surveys regularly report strong sympathy with the dolphins to the extent Kiwis would even pay more taxes and / or more for their fish to save the dolphins. NGOs have taken the wee Maui dolphin to heart, and with their rounded fin Maui have become a conservation icon, a symbol of all that’s wrong with what we’re doing to the ocean – including over-fishing, seismic testing, pollution.

NGOs, civil society and scientists have been urging governments for years to protect the full habitat of Maui dolphins. That means an area from Maunganui Bluff in the North, to at least Whanganui river in the South. It should also include the dolphin corridor all the way to the South Island where Maui and/or Hector’s dolphins are also found. Scientists say Maui dolphin habitat extends to at least the 100 metre depth contour, a claim the government refuses to be guided by. The dolphins are sometimes found inside West Coast harbours. But some set netting is allowed, and the government, early in its term, reopened the Manukau harbour to ring netting. At every turn, the Government has said it was doing enough to mitigate the risks to this, the world’s smallest and rarest marine dolphin. Armed with promises and spin, they have refused to do more.

It seemed that the government-fishing lobby relationship was too close to allow any movement in either political policy or business practice. With Sir Peter Goodfellow President of the National Party while also major shareholder in Sanfords and Chair of the Seafood Industry Council, environmental groups felt as if they were banging their heads against a monolithic, iron clad, edifice. Fishing industry hegemony ruled with an invisible but iron hand, shaping fisheries resource management, regulation and conservation policy.

So how is it that two of the most significant fishing companies on the North Island West Coast have now admitted their fishing practices and places are putting the precious dolphin at risk such that they’re prepared to voluntarily change?

Their proposals have been praised by some NGOs (“ground breaking”,”leadership”, “inspiring”), tentatively welcomed by others (“a small step in the right direction”), celebrated by various opposition political parties (“stepping up to meet the challenge of protecting Maui dolphins”) and outright criticised by some scientists and iwi, for being too little too late after years of denial and killing.

On paper, at least, Moana and Sanford’s proposals look significant. Their initiatives, developed with environmental organisation WWF, trump any suggestions from the Government. Sanfords and Moana are “committed to a lasting solution” including withdrawing Annual Catch Entitlements (ACE) from coastal set netters north of New Plymouth by next year; South of New Plymouth and in harbours, all set net fishers leasing Sanford or Moana New Zealand annual ACE in Maui habitat will have video cameras and electronic monitoring by October 2017; the companies will support government engagement with other set netters to join this commitment and work with the more than 130 (!) other owner operators who set net inside harbours financially supporting vessel monitoring systems if they wish to join in the initiative. Sanford and Moana New Zealand will transition away from conventional trawl fishing methods within Māui habitat. They will invest resources in dolphin avoidance and/or mitigation measures. “Any fishing method deployed by Sanford or Moana New Zealand from December 2022 has to be recognised as Māui-safe”.
Even though Sanfords are the largest quota owner and catcher of fish along the North Island West Coast, these two companies combined entail less than 50% of the set and trawl net effort in the area. Under the new voluntary proposal, only five out of 15 boats currently operating in the area will be affected. There’s a risk that ACE will be sold to someone else but still fished. Fishing effort may just move elsewhere that’s not protected. The ‘commitment’ isn’t mandatory, enforceable or binding. The government promised full observer coverage on fishing boats in core Maui habitat anyway, even though it’s failed to deliver. The new proposals don’t actually cover the whole Maui habitat. Without a total closure of trawl and set nets within the whole Maui dolphin range – including harbours and areas to the south, applying to all fishing boats, say scientists, the proposal is just so much “PR” and “spin”. “We need to do a whole lot better than this” says Professor Liz Slooten from Otago University, an expert in Maui and Hector’s dolphins who has been ringing this particular alarm bell for more than thirty years.

In announcing voluntary measures to apply fishing restrictions in an area defined as “Maui habitat”, imposing upon themselves, a particular timeframe and technological fix, Sanfords and Moana have managed to pre-empt alternative definitions and solutions, created a self-regulated (though apparently transparent) regime, responded to global and local institutional, public, consumer and NGO pressure, and to be seen to be acting as responsible and righteous corporate citizens in the general and political eye.

Sanfords and Moana have taken the heat off the government which has failed to achieve its own compliance and observer coverage targets anyway. In taking the higher moral ground, they’ve executed clever image and damage control. Whether other fishing companies in the Maui zone rise to the challenge is simply up to them, despite Sanford and Moana’s incentives. Whether the government rises to the challenge and assists the transition away from distinctly dolphin unfriendly methods, and toward a proper binding protection and compliance regime seems less likely, especially now. Whether this precludes more comprehensive protection and lets both the government and the fishing industry ‘off the hook’ from better protection is quite likely.

It’s great marketing, and every life saved is worthwhile. It’s time the fishing industry admitted its impacts and took efforts to address them. It’s a big step forward for a previously resistant industry. But it’s only part of the solution, dealing with some of the problem, and Maui – and Hector’s dolphins, deserve more.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/12/17/damage-control-better-for-business-than-for-dolphins/feed/4The war machine rolls on while children beg for blanketshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/11/26/the-war-machine-rolls-on-while-children-beg-for-blankets/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/11/26/the-war-machine-rolls-on-while-children-beg-for-blankets/#commentsFri, 25 Nov 2016 20:59:53 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=78208

Have you thought about the children of Syria lately? Is it ‘so last season’s war’, a normal state of affairs, background in the news as a change from more current, closer crises? Do the battles of Homs and Mosul, the Kurdish Peshmergers and the ‘Coalition’, sound slightly theoretically and strategically intriguing, like chess, or ‘Risk’, using someone else’s real life army and someone else’s real life country as the playing ground? Are you like me, and feel desperate and helpless in the face of such unjust and overwhelming suffering.

It’s almost winter now in the Middle East and there’s snow on the ground of the refugee camps, ‘home’ to millions of displaced refugees. Unicef warns of floods, disease, cold as low as -5 degrees. And despite tribalist onslaught from the very best weaponry America and Russia have to offer, “local resistance is proving more fierce than expected”. Hundreds of thousands of sorties, bombs, missiles, drone strikes and supported ground force attacks have not stopped ISIS, but must leave the locals wondering who the attackers and who the enemies are.

In some cities, like Aleppo, there are no hospitals left unbombed, there’s no access to food or medicine. Conditions have gone from “terrible, to terrifying, to barely survivable”. Indeed, many civilians and their civilisations do not survive. But still, media images show kids riding their bikes among the dust of passing armoured vehicles, families skirting bombed buildings. Other shots show bloodied and dusty children, stunned with shell shock.

On the one hand, American forces say they’re going to “eliminate” ISIS, whose forces are trapped in Mosul facing a ‘last bloody stand’. But just when you thought no resistance could face the relentless bombardment from Russia and America and their allies, coalition forces say the ongoing battle against ISIS, for territory and for supremacy, won’t be easy. Despite the hyped promises of quick and decisive battles to wipe out IS once and for all, coalition leaders warn defeat of IS in Mosul won’t end the war. There will always be another ISIS enclave, another target, another city, another country, or cell.

Syria in particular looks like the site of just another proxy war, a stand-off between the old arch rivals America and Russia, but in the Middle East, again expediently using other countries’ ground troops and American weaponry ensuring as few coffins as possible, go home draped in the old stars and stripes.

So while the war machine white-washed its prime purpose here in New Zealand last week, by lending some of its significant resources to help in Kaikoura after the earthquakes, we’re right to note, and stand against, the role played by the world’s militaries, in killing innocent civilians, of creating huge unrest, environmental damage, of taking resources away from more worthy causes like education and health. Everyone who stood up for peace in Auckland last week during the arms expo and military celebrations, confronted the hypocrisy of militarised states, the immorality that is nation and international system as war machine.

Unicef is running a campaign with Gareth Morgan as ambassador, to raise funds for Syrian war victims and refugees. The campaign notes that the innocents displaced by the world’s most powerful and militant countries, “have gone through years of fighting, of fighting for survival”, and now they’re “fighting to keep warm” as winter sets in. These are people who have lost everything – their homes, their land, their possessions, their livelihoods, family members and friends. The refugee camps might exist for years. Their urban homelands are often almost completely destroyed.
There are more than 2.5 million vulnerable children, victims of someone else’s war. But for $20 you can buy three thermal blankets for refugees, and Jo and Gareth Morgan will match your donation. Elsewhere on the internet, for those victims of conflict and poverty in other parts of Africa, you can buy a goat, a well, chickens, girls’ schooling, flushing toilets, solar energy and more.

So good citizens will remember Syrian children, Iraqi families, refugees, the besieged. We might even make a donation of $20 here or $50 there for blankets or wells or seeds. Generally we’ll be occupied with our day to day existence, shocked by Kaikoura, thinking about summer. But the war pigs will continue their savagery. They’ll use improvised bombs, weaponry from conventional industrialists who are also arms manufacturers and who were assembled in Auckland last week, chemical weapons, and bombardment as weapon of mass destruction of homes and antiquities.
Across the world, almost $1,700 billion dollars is spent on war every year, but hey brother can you spare $20 to buy some blankets for refugee children, victims of war, facing sub-zero cold in a tent?

Good people are rightfully alarmed that the ‘Bishop’ of the Destiny Church, Brian Tamaki, has linked tragedies like South Island earthquakes to ‘human sins’ like ‘homosexuality’. His comments are offensive to those affected by these natural (not God-made) disasters, as well as to ‘homosexuals’ and the public.

Tamaki’s comments have led to public outrage and to questions about how someone espousing such alarming views, can be a leader of a church, much less a church that pays no tax. We wonder how a nasty and narrow-minded man can get away with openly preaching such dangerous rhetoric in a church he invented and financially benefits from, but still have ‘charitable’ status. It’s a heartening sign that over 110,000 New Zealanders have signed a petition demanding an end to the Church’s tax free status.

Mainstream Christians are concerned that other churches could get caught up in a review of tax exemptions that apply to the Destiny Church, and risk losing their own charitable status. And as long as the Destiny Church continues to comply with the Charities Act, it can’t be struck off. Sadly, misogyny, irrationality, inciting prejudice, and hate speech aren’t enough.

It is indeed a problem with the Charity laws of the commonwealth, that organisations like the Destiny Church comply with the legal criteria required to become a charity, but groups like the National Council of Women and Greenpeace don’t, because they step over the boundary into advocacy – wanting to change inequities, not just make money from them.

According to Wikipedia, Brian Tamaki and his wife Hannah practice ‘prosperity theology’ – believing financial blessings reflect the will of God. Humility is certainly not the Tamaki’s strongpoint. Their gratuitous, profligate and unashamed reveling in conspicuous and vain trappings of wealth, display that prosperity belief to the hilt. But that wealth is derived from their poorer congregation, who are probably no lesser morally, and surely no less blessed by God, than Brian and Hannah Tamaki, even if inequalities in society fall most heavily upon those poorer people. In short, wealth has never equated to moral value – and surely not Godliness.

Tamaki’s attitudes are so outdated and narrow minded they have no place in civil society. Who actually believes that shit? and who in their right mind takes it seriously. But there’s a worry that the media attention helps his cause. It’s exposure Tamaki probably enjoys. He’s certainly unrepentant.

Even if religious leaders from more conventional churches say he’s misinterpreting and misquoting the Bible. Even if the Prime Minister says he’s ridiculous. Even if he looks unconvincing, superstitious, closed-minded, and potentially dangerous.

Unfortunately, such dog whistle hate speech gets him lots of media attention and that means potentially more church goers and more tithes for him.

Even though he’s been rated as one of New Zealand’s most distrusted personalities for many years in a row, video recordings of his church services show rooms full of seemingly ordinary looking people, who can be heard agreeing and endorsing his views.

It’s a worry if his views reflect an ugly, irrational undercurrent, and have a resonance among anyone – but in the era of Trump and ‘post-truth’ politics, hate speech could be the new MO. And it’s not just a concern that Tamaki’s jumping on a diversity-hating bandwagon, but if the bandwagon is already there, and he’s giving it voice.

Views such as his should be strongly and publicly rejected. He should be seen for the dangerous lunatic that he is. There is no charity and very little that’s Christian in his views. The petition calling for him to pay taxes, is unlikely to change a complex and long standing law with generations of case history confirming its unfairness. However, most Kiwis realise the devastating South Island earthquakes of recent days and years are caused by tectonic plate movement and geological forces, not by a God angry with gays and ‘sinners’.

The righteous are those who stand shoulder to shoulder with gays and the transgender community, and with victims of earthquakes, and against Tamaki’s cynical and fundamentalist bigotry.

Dairy industry representatives, academics and the Minister for Primary Industries were full of denials this week as they all sought to explain, excuse, diminish or justify animal cruelty on dairy farms, exposed again by FarmWatch.

Of ten apparently random dairy farms surreptiously filmed by FarmWatch, nine showed mistreatment of ‘bobby’ calves. Newborn calves unwanted for breeding or meat were shown aggressively separated from their concerned mothers, one calf at least was dragged across the paddock by a hind leg, some were left dead in wooden bins, discarded. Many were callously thrown into crates on the back of tractors, kept waiting for collection in basic cages on the side of the road, hurled, brutally, into the back of the trucks used to cart them off to death in the meat works.
No one should reasonably deny the video footage shows the mistreatment and cruelty to innocent young animals – and their suffering mothers, but dairy industry advocates do, and their defences ring hollow.

Nathan Guy, Minister for Primary Industries, said “a few laggards” are responsible for these instances – as if it was just by chance that nine of the ten farms filmed showed brutal behaviour toward the calves. He said such farmers and animal handlers ‘need to pull their socks up”, as if they’re schoolyard miscreants – not actually breaking the law, damaging dairying’s reputation, hurting and killing innocent and confused, newborn animals. Mr Guy claimed there are ‘hard hitting’ regulations in place against animal cruelty, that infringement notices can be applied, that improvements are on their way…. All the while dismissing and demeaning the severity of the treatment shown and the systemically exploitative and cruel practices to animals and the environment, on every day farms.

There are two million unwanted dairy calves sent to the meat works each year. And an unknown quantity that don’t make it that far. For the 12,000 farms in New Zealand there are only 17 dedicated welfare officers and 31 compliance officers. That’s about 100,000 calves per inspector. FarmWatch say new rules brought in last year after their expose of widespread brutality to calves, have done little to address animal abuse. Behaviour as shown in their videos was illegal then, as it is illegal now, but little compliance action is taken and abuse is still the norm.

Federated Farmers representatives admitted that such practices are part of everyday farm life. Lifting and dragging calves from a hind leg, or forcefully hurling them backwards into trucks, is not cruelty they said, despite the evidence. “It’s common farming practice”, “typical farm life”. Andrew Hoggard, Federated Farmers’ Dairy Chair, admitted ‘It did look rough” however. “It wouldn’t look great to someone who isn’t used to farming”. But he also sought to pass the buck, saying “it’s not farming that’s the issue but truck driver handling”. As if the truck drivers throwing the animals into the truck didn’t follow the forced forced breeding and milking of cows, separation of calves from mothers, and as if it didn’t precede the transportation of said calves jammed in trucks to the slaughter house – where of course FarmWatch have also revealed atrocious treatment of these placid animals.

Federated Farmers say farmers ‘treat their animals like their babies’. I’d like to believe that there are kind and loving farmers out there. But the whole process is one based on disrespect, mistreatment and exploitation of animals.

Andrew Hoggard said public outrage shows people’s disconnect with farming life”. In that case, FarmWatch is doing us all a favour for exposing what would be appalling treatment for any animal. If this treatment was inflicted upon a dog or a cat, there’d be hell to pay. The public certainly shouldn’t support it.

The dairy industry and its marketing gurus would have us believe dairying is all happy cud-chewing cows in flowery meadows, not captive and milk producing ‘machines’ and ‘discarded’ calves thrown about like inanimate objects. FarmWatch have exposed a landscape of heartache, maternal loss, brutality. Dead calves lie disregarded, piled on top of each other like holocaust victims. Live calves are treated like the nearly dead. Add to that Mike Joy and others’ revelations about wider environmental impacts of dairy and it’s clear this isn’t just an isolated issue, but strikes to the heart of farming as an economic model where animals, earth and water (and some employees) are treated like things; commodified, economic units. Worthless only except in terms of potential earning.
Meanwhile Professor of Agribusness at Waikato University, Jaqueline Rowarth attempts to say separating babies from their mothers at a few days old is best practice. Throwing them around even though they’re unsteady enough on their feet, hurling them into trucks and taking them to the meat works to be killed, ‘it’s not cruelty, it’s not like waterboarding, or pulling the wings off flies (??), it’s not ‘torturing for pleasure’’’.

Professor Rowarth says that the videos, and campaign to expose animal mistreatment on dairy farms is driven by a vegan agenda. But if the poor treatment didn’t occur, there would be nothing to expose. And for many, such practices are what drive the vegan agenda, not the other way round.
Dairying is an industry where mistreatment of animals and the land and water, are the norm, where animal cruelty and despoliation of nature are defended by the government. As ‘common farming practices’ such as these are exposed, for whatever reason, it’s legitimate that they should be rejected by consumers, and changed by farmers and governments alike. Until the regulators and the producers recognise there’s a problem that needs to end, increasing numbers of consumers like me, will pledge to be dairy free, and refuse to buy into the dirty dairy model and its products. That will be better for the animals themselves, our own health, and the planet.

Despite noble principles, the United States’ political system makes a mockery of the promise of democracy. The Presidential contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton brings the limited choice of American voters into focus and highlights just how corrupt things are in the ‘land of the free’. Either of these candidates unleashed on the world are scary prospects, but also humiliating for democracies everywhere because America wields so much weight in the world, exercising political supremacy and military dominance without the moral foundations to justify it.

Trump’s offensive and misogynistic attitudes to women, his tax avoidance, his accumulation of obscene amounts of wealth, are on one side of the ledger. On the other side, Clinton’s association with illegitimate invasions of Middle Eastern states means there’s wet blood on her hands that’s still running in the streets of Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria.

Put that against a backdrop of historic electoral horrors that make further mockery of democracy. George W Bush’s usurpation of Al Gore – seems like ancient history- but the discrediting of hundreds of thousands of minorities’ votes in part gave rise to the mess in the Middle East and elsewhere, today; Bill Clinton’s lying about his sordid affairs while in office – and his role in bombing foreign nations in attempted distractions; Richard Nixon’s Watergate; JFK taking the world to the brink of nuclear war. Whatever way Americans vote, there’s a strong insidious and dangerous pattern in American political leadership, and no matter what the outcome of this Presidential election, no doubt we’re all in for more of the same.

And of course, economic and political freedoms in theory don’t always translate into equal outcomes. Domestically, the US has the second highest incarceration rate per capita, in the world. The States have the second highest relative poverty rates in the developed world, and 44% homeless people are workers. The 2014 US Census declared that 14.8% of the general population lived in poverty, disproportionately affecting non-whites. 2013 calculations showed one out of 30, or 2.5 million children to be homeless. There were an estimated 57,849 homeless war veterans in the United States in January 2013, and war vets apparently comprise 12 percent of all homeless adults. Sickeningly, according to Amnesty International USA, vacant houses outnumber homeless people by five times.
Given the economic alienation of many Americans, it’s no wonder political ambivalence also prevails. US voter turnout lags behind most of its peers in the OECD, at 31st among the 35 member states.

But internationally, the world’s ‘largest democracy’ exhibits other contradictory behaviour. It leads the tables in arms exports, accounting for more than 30% of global arms sales to at least 94 recipients, followed by Russia. America is also one of the world’s biggest arms importers. As long ago as 2011 they’d spent $1.3 trillion on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Defence spending in the latest year when figures are available, 2013, were $610 billion for that year alone, not counting ‘Homeland Security’, nuclear weapons research and other expenses.

So while actively oppressing Americans at home, abandoning those who have served in its wars overseas, it kills hundreds and thousands elsewhere, often in unarmed drone strikes, destabilising other democracies, spreading fear of destruction around the world, spying on citizens everywhere. But America does so in the name of democracy. All that is scary not just for those in the US ‘land of the free’, it’s scary for you and for me.

Those of us interested in the marine environment either as fishers or as conservationists, have known for a long time that in general, current commercial fishing practices stink.

A Quota Management System vainly celebrated as the ‘world’s best’, that allegedly encourages misreporting and dumping as fishers seek to extract premium value by throwing less valuable stock overboard. An industry that University of Auckland Business School scientists say has discarded 2.7 times the reported quantities caught. Marine mammals such as Maui and Hector’s dolphins and New Zealand sea lions, and sea birds, are almost extinct because they’re by-catch. A fishing fleet that seems to act with ignorance, impunity, and a minimal level of observer coverage, compliance and enforcement. Assumptions that ‘deals have been done’ to avoid prosecution. Hitherto, labour abuses. Unsavoury links between the National Party president Peter Goodfellow, and the Seafood Industry Council and Sanfords where he’s a director and major shareholder. Scope for corruption given that an agency overseeing the small amount of fishing observation are also industry operators. There’s evidence of collusion, contradictions, denial, capture, and cover-ups.

As always, we should be grateful to the whistle blowers who leaked internal emails in which senior Fisheries management staff admit that fish dumping ‘is so widespread, the current system is failing’, and that officials ‘have been unable to get on top of it since day one of the Quota Management System (QMS)’. Fisheries managers have said unreported fish dumping is having an impact on fish stocks, and that if those wasting fish, and hiding dumping, were prosecuted in accordance with the law, about half the current fishing operators would go out of business. Both the public, and NGOs argue there’s evidence of a ‘systemic failure of the QMS’, and the failure to prosecute is no less than scandalous.

Commercial fishing operators held their stare the longest and managed, somehow, to exert enough pressure on Ministry of Primary Industries Fisheries managers, that clear evidence of tonnes of fish dumping, unreporting, and the killing of dolphins in nets, was considered not worthy of prosecution. It does make you wonder just what it would take to get a prosecution, if not this standard of evidence and scale of transgression.

Fisheries managers considered the reputational risks to MPI from not prosecuting, and the risk of not providing clear sanctions to the fisheries operators. They said in an internal email, that “the offending from (five of the) six vessels using camera monitoring as part of a summer Hector’s dolphin observer trial, was “of such a scale and blatancy that a warning (without prosecution) would seem disproportionate to the offending and could be seen as MPI sending the wrong message to industry, the public and our trade partners”, “as it may appear we are undermining our commitment to sustainability and conservation of our fisheries”. He also said “we need to hold people to account when they transgress”. The evidence was “overwhelming” and “beyond dispute”. Despite advice on the strong grounds for prosecution from the Crown Law Office, and penalties available including fines of up to $250,000 and forfeiture of fishing vessels, just warning letters were sent.
The Minister for Primary Industries and MPI senior staff try to quell the rising tide of public outrage by assuring us prior unreported dumping of perfectly good fish is irrelevant now because the Ministry is moving on. When Glenn Simmons from the Business School released the findings of his research about the scale of fish dumping earlier this year, Fisheries Manager Dave Taylor changed his earlier private tune and publicly said there was no problem. But in the independent report commissioned under pressure by MPI, Solicitor-General Michael Heron QC, said the failure not to prosecute was deeply flawed, and that there’s evidence that rather than tightening compliance efforts, MPI has subsequently failed to either change the law, or enforcement of it.

There’s a tragic and perverse irony that the leaked video footage showing the hauling up and throwing overboard of perfectly good fish, as well as endangered Hector’s dolphins, came about as part of a summer Hector’s dolphin monitoring programme. Six fishing vessels out of Timaru agreed to be part of the electronic video monitoring trial. But there’s speculation that most others refused because they’d be caught for the same thing. And if transgressions were found on at least five of the six boats monitored, just imagine what’s happening unobserved. No wonder Fisheries managers say a substantial quantity of QMS fish is discarded, that it’s “the single biggest issue we face in our wild stock fisheries”; that it’s impacting on stocks, as confirmed by Glenn Simmons’ report. Fishing skippers themselves admitted they ‘didn’t even really know the rules’, and ‘they’ve never been not guilty’ of fish dumping, and ‘that if they wrote down every species they killed, they’d need a stack of books a mile high’. No wonder Hector’s dolphin numbers have decreased in the last forty years from an estimated 30,000 to an estimated 7000 now, according to University of Otago figures.

Under pressure, MPI make promises of 100% electronic (camera) observer coverage – which is by no means perfect in itself. But there’s no evidence of improvements in any sort of hurry, in a dysfunctional relationship where the fishing industry seems to have more power than the regulatory agency tasked with monitoring them. Fishermen have presumed immunity, they’ve been able to refuse observers on board, the fishing industry is both poacher and gamekeeper. There’s been little prosecution against ‘those who transgress’.

Meanwhile, those dolphins that were supposed to be managed through this observer programme, have been filmed hauled up drowned in nets, with reporting inaccurate there too and no prosecutions taken. It’s reminiscent of another hollow promise where Minister of Conservation Nick Smith, made a big song and dance in 2012 about introducing 100% observer coverage on fishing boats operating in the core habitat of endangered Maui dolphins off the North Island West Coast, but doing so has required the removal of observers from the East Coast South Island fishing effort out of Timaru, itself killing Hector’s dolphins and dumping fish. Even now, total observer coverage for Maui, the most endangered marine dolphin of them all, stands at around only 25%.

Public confidence in MPI is shot. This country’s environmental reputation takes yet another blow. That Fisheries manager was right when he said, with the fisheries abuses allowed by MPI, “we are undermining our commitment to sustainability and conservation of our fisheries”.

We can judge society by how it treats its weakest and most humble, just as we can judge industry and industry regulators by how well they manage and prosecute against their own injustices. In New Zealand’s fisheries, because of the economic imperatives involved, and strong links between the government, the fishing industry and supposed fishing regulators, systemic injustices prevail. These injustices are committed against the common environmental interests of New Zealanders, against our endangered dolphins, against fish stocks and future generations.

DisclaimerChristine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

Election papers have been issued to decide representatives for local government, health boards, and liquor licensing trusts. Among the candidates some eccentricities shine through making the candidates’ book quite entertaining reading. There are some good people and policies too. But one set of policies in the Waitakere Licensing Trust in particular, rises above the usual mediocre rhetoric.
Chris Fowlie, long-time president of the National Organisation for Marijuana Law Reform, Norml, is running for the West Auckland liquor licensing trust on a set of policies that seek regulatory parity between alcohol and that other, less harmful, drug of popular choice, cannabis. Chris’ signs echo evidence that says cannabis is safer than alcohol –and suggest, “Let’s treat it that way”. –Let’s manage the relative harms from alcohol and cannabis in a considered, evidence based and consistent way, using existing licensing trust machinery. Local level regulation of cannabis, as with alcohol, rather than prohibition, helps manage health and social impacts and prevents the criminalisation of adults for victimless acts. Also as is the case with alcohol, taxes on sales can be circulated back into the community for wider social benefit.

Given the zealous but futile war on drugs – just another failed war – who would have thought that the United States would become more liberal in its drug policies than New Zealand? Yet state level cannabis decriminalisation in the US provides good precedent for here.

Where national governments are too averse, narrow-minded or conservative, to enact policies that recognise the logic behind progressive social change, other expressions of power and forms of government provide potential. Councils within New Zealand in the past who became nuclear and GE free, reflected public frustration with government policies, and gave voice to legitimate but marginalised dissident causes. In doing so, they were forces of change.

If local liquor licensing trusts were brave enough to regulate ‘Cannabis Clubs’ they could similarly show a lead to a reluctant government. Chris Fowlie claims cannabis clubs are legally permitted now. Imagine the precedent for other local licensing trusts and the government if the Waitakere Liquor Licensing Trust managed to regulate the sale of cannabis, taking the trade out of the powerful West Auckland gangs, reducing criminal harm and generating significant funds to return to community groups and projects.

New Zealand Drug Foundation studies showed that 64% of Kiwis surveyed, across all political parties, said a small amount of cannabis should be decriminalised or legalised. Support increased to 79% when it came to medical marijuana for pain relief.

Statistics released over the last few days confirm trends of declining prosecution and conviction of cannabis users. In the Manukau, Auckland and North Shore police districts in 2015, it’s been reported that only 332 convictions for cannabis were successfully prosecuted. The 2012 UN Drug Report reported that New Zealanders are among the world’s ‘top smokers’, with between 9-14% of Kiwis, cannabis users. There are clearly a lot more smokers than busts. Cops obviously use their own discretion in enforcing cannabis laws, thereby interpreting the law as they go along. That approach is pragmatic and sensible, and probably accurately reflects the fact that they have more serious issues to worry about than adults smoking weed. It does mean the law can be applied arbitrarily though, and fails to address health and social harm issues that might arise.

Local Government has increasing responsibility for managing the location and local impacts of low level potentially socially harmful exchanges such as legal prostitution, gambling, Sunday trading and the sale and consumption of alcohol. Ongoing research suggests responsible cannabis sale and consumption can be managed for better public outcomes than through the current prohibition denial. In voting Chris onto the Waitakere Licensing Trust, electors in the area get a chance to blaze a trail ahead of the government but alongside public opinion, and spearhead significant progressive change for New Zealand.

Disclaimer Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

How much oppression is justified to enforce liberty? That’s a question arising from the ban on Burkhas and ‘Burkhinis’ in France and Spain. And when does mandatory secularism become an excuse for bigotry, racism and sexism? We’ve also seen some answers to that.

Most summer trips to the beach in the western world reveal the diversity of the human form laid out in all its glory. It’s not always ‘pretty’. But it’s the beach, so a different set of standards apply. We wear things we’d never otherwise wear in public or on the street. We choose the garb we’re most comfortable in, for swimming, sitting in the sun or parading. Almost anything – or nothing goes.

Some of us prefer to let it all hang out, and some prefer modesty.

Apparently, for Muslim women, modesty requires full dress – which can look quite styley; it’s self-respectful, and can be quite practical in offering protection from the sun. Among all the different shapes and sizes and states of undress at the beach, there are often sights far more challenging than women who choose to cover up. So in most countries, among the topless sunbathers, the formless bodies, the semi-naked teenagers, and the rash-suited swimmers, people in various other states of cover should just be part of that wonderfully diverse human mixed soup. I’ve seen photos of Catholic nuns paddling too. But no-one ever passed a law against that.

Indeed, it was only Muslim women – wearing burkhinis, and tunics, leggings and headscarves, who were fined for their beach-wear in France. So this isn’t about fashion, liberty, protecting from religious oppression, safety or providing for freedom of religious choice. This is about being a Muslim woman in France. Indeed, when a fight broke out over photos of a woman being taken in a burkhini, local politicians said it was the woman’s fault – proof, they said, of the dangers of ‘Muslim women wearing burkhinis at the beach’. That’s typical victim shaming right there.

French fears of ‘terrorism’ have become a justification for targeting Muslim women at the beach using tenuous links and reason. Women in conventional modest Muslim clothing at beaches and pools is out of the social order and will be prosecuted. Public displays of Muslim womanhood will not be tolerated. All Muslims, and specifically women in this case, are the collective scapegoats for terrorism, using the logic ‘Some Muslims carried out some terrorism attacks, therefore all Muslims are bad”. Furthermore “All Muslims are bad, so anyone wearing Muslim clothing is bad”. Ergo “Muslim women at the beach are bad”, a threat to social order and public safety, and should be banned.

It’s election year in France so across the spectrum politicians are picking up the bait and acting as harbingers of the hazards of Muslim women at the beach wearing headscarves and tunics. It’s a scary and slippery slope when a country adopts that almost as pre-election political consensus. But it also reveals hypocrisy and bias. When Saudi Arabia and Iran impose rigid dress codes, it’s oppression of women, but when France does it, it’s liberating? Even though no one actually asked the women how they felt about what they were wearing, ‘you can’t have a Muslim woman sitting on a beach wearing clothes’.

Nominally, burkhinis and Muslim swimming gear is outlawed because it is ‘unhygienic’, ‘enslavement of women’, ‘not respectful of good morals and secularism’, ‘extremist’, and ‘a risk to public order’. The excuses are ridiculous. The woman who was forced to remove her tunic by flak jacketed cops with pepper spray was just sitting on the beach. Nothing exceptionally unhygienic there. People nearby cheered when the police targeted her, and told her to go home. That’s not about hygiene, that’s about racism, fear, ignorance, irrationality. If she chose what she wore to the beach, she’s not enslaved. How she dresses on the outside says nothing about her morals.

There are almost five million Muslims in France, in a large part the result of France’s history of colonisation in Africa. At about 7% of the population, for many, France is ‘home’. Knee jerk, baseless prejudice inciting anti-Muslim sentiment among the rest of the population can only stigmatise and alienate Muslims further.

But it’s the same old story, men telling women what to do, what to wear, and they can’t win, unless they’re invisible. After all, what are Muslim women doing at the beach anyway. How come they’re even out in public. The French establishment would clearly rather they were somewhere else altogether.

The history of shaming women is nothing new. Women are shamed for wearing too little – wear a short skirt or low top and you’re a slut and deserve what you get. Wear a moderately conservative religious outfit and you’re a threat to the whole state.

The real principle is that women should be the ones who chose the garments that express their freedoms and liberties, and that this should extend to all parts of the public realm. This is lost on posturing French politicians taking cheap election shots to incite those who fear terrorism and fear real freedom for Muslim women.

Local government election hoardings are up, complete with pictures of smiling candidates and sometimes obscure one-liners. Right-wing lists of promises are inclined to take the typical rhetoric – to cut rates, council staff numbers, red tape, and to ‘open the books’. Candidates who have never been elected before make promises they may never be able to keep, often without looking at the public details available in the already open books of Council Annual Plans and Reports. Aspiring politicians spend disproportionate amounts to woo voters who are mostly uninspired even to carry out an easy postal vote.

The importance of local government is usually overlooked, except in complaint. Conservative voters moan they get nothing for their rates. That the council should do more with less, that there’s no accountability, that councils take money for nothing and rates are too high.

But local government services impact every element of our daily lives. We can tend to take for granted, the benefits of having our rubbish collected, reticulated water that’s usually safe to drink, sealed roads, great libraries, and civic amenities. We can disagree with how those services are provided, and by whom, and rightfully bemoan inefficiency, unaccountability and waste. But the buses usually run on time, and big budget projects like the city rail link benefit the whole region. Those council employees that people complain about, are people too, usually with a genuine interest in the wellbeing of the public sphere. We all deserve to be safe from dodgy building practices or hazardous activities and if takes ‘red tape’ to do that, then count me in.

Public water contamination incidents show just how dependent we are on reliable civic infrastructure to address public health issues, rather than to cause them. The rules governing discharges to waterways and aquifers are legitimate matters for local/regional government (though pretty hard to change). Whether we should be forced even to connect to any public water supply is another question. Political support for asset sales is as major an issue at local government level as it is at central level, given usually those assets generate enduring incomes that keep rates low. Promises to keep rates below population growth rate mean that levels of service can only decline in the absence of other tools which will all have their cost too. And if higher rates means better services, then I’m prepared to pay.

Traditional local government ‘core business’ focus on roads, rates and rubbish has been in support the interests of capital, allowing the exchange of goods and services in an ‘efficient’, mobile and regulated way, with minimal costs and burdens for ratepayers, (originally with franchise limited only to landowners). Conservative political views limit tolerance for more social or environmental goals. That’s meant it’s not always fair, or equitable, or serves the needs of all.

Given that so many social goods are distributed unjustly, councils can either perpetuate or alleviate environmental injustices. But motorways and power pylons go through poorer communities such as Mangere, Massey and Onehunga. Poorer communities often have poorer transport access, more pollution, lower quality amenity. Civic goods are distributed unevenly. Adverse air quality impacts disproportionately, with particulates polluting lower socio-economic groups in Christchurch. Poor people shiver with inadequate heating while breathing the smoke from wealthier peoples’ fires. NZ studies showed climate change affects coastal dwellers, those over 65 and poorer people more than others. Even participation in decision-making is unevenly distributed, as working class people have less capacity, power, knowledge and other resources with which to defend their environments. And unfortunately they’re less likely to vote.

It’s not easy for the wider public to make an informed choice about candidates even though policy information has improved through time. Word of mouth, networks and incumbency often assist the best guess. Even then, with a First Past the Post electoral system in most of New Zealand, the first choice doesn’t always get the most votes, with often more against than in support. In other instances, the candidates just fail to inspire. Government vetoes of local government aspirations can thwart democracy at community level.

Voters from the left should support greater council intervention and spending, not less, and tools that are equitable, supporting redistributive environmental and social policies. Local government is seldom sexy, but it’s always essential for environmental, safety and community benefits, as much as to balance the economic ones.

Disclaimer Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. She was a local body politician for fifteen years and researched local government politics at the University of Auckland. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

Citizens in Europe are reportedly on edge after madmen ran amok in Germany and France, in six incidents in two weeks. Fears are heightened and people on the street say they are more suspicious of refugees now. Just as European people become more fearful and nervous – so should refugees or people who look like them.

As horrific and barbaric as the highly publicised and recent acts of violence are, let’s put things in perspective. In 2013 there were 716 acts of intentional homicidal violence in Germany – and we can assume most murders every year are not related to asylum seekers, refugees or terrorists. In Germany, smoking kills about 128,000 people a year and 3540 people die in road crashes. There are 1.25million road deaths globally a year, and 34,064 in the US alone.

But the everyday sites of the recent European attacks also heighten fears. At a festival, cafes, with families celebrating Bastille Day, on a train, in church. Even without systematic links between these events, and similar random attacks in America, people are left wondering, ‘is anywhere safe’. The sympathies for those killed and living in fear and insecurity are due, wherever they live.

But once again, western media, and even western citizens, place higher priority on the suffering of their own. Especially when it suits a popular narrative – that terror reigns on Western streets; bearded, middle eastern men are dangerous; ISIS is a threat to our security and our way of life. Whereas in fact those we know are more likely to kill us than strangers are, smoking kills way more people than terrorism does, and us westerners live in pretty safe parts of the world.

And while the news lately has been headlined by the latest recent, even random act of senseless violence (as all acts of violence are) perpetrated by unhinged vigilantes in Europe, world attention has been distracted from the latest random acts of violence perpetrated by the US, France and Russia, and the state and ISIS forces, on innocents, in Syria.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, there have been at least 400,000 people killed. At least 14,000 of them were children. American air strikes have killed almost 6000 Syrians, at least 600 civilians. France air attacks conducted directly after the Nice truck rampage, with US airstrikes, killed about 140 citizens – men, women and children, in roughly the last week alone. Russia has killed about 2,600 civilians in its attacks on Syria. At least 700 medical workers have been killed – and although Russia reportedly also targets humanitarian facilities such as hospitals, 95% of medical workers killed since the start of the war, are victims of Syrian government forces.

So it’s not just foreign planes and munitions – add to that the damage from local factions and the state, and you have houses burned, villages destroyed. In some cities, every downtown building has been bombed. Suburbs are urban battlefields. Citizens are under siege. In Aleppo about three hundred thousand civilians have been caught between state and rebel forces, in a ruined city, lacking food, water and medical supplies. Half the residents of Homs are either dead or displaced. Three million buildings have been damaged, 1.2million homes, 9000 industrial facilities. 3878 schools have been affected. 1451 mosques have been targeted or destroyed, plus another 98 churches. 104 cultural and heritage sites and 5/6 UNESCO World Heritage Sites have been severely damaged and / or destroyed. In some places, there’s not much left at all. More than two million Syrians live in areas infested with landmines and unexploded cluster and other bombs that will contribute to physical insecurity and harm for decades to come.

And while Europeans feel insecure visiting the local café, less some madman let loose, and deserve our concern, also spare a thought for those whose previously also civilised lives, have descended into hell. Spare a thought for the equally innocent men, women and children living and dying amidst insecurity so complete as to be unimaginable to us all. Spare a thought for the displaced, the dead and injured among a Syrian battlefield they used to call home.

Chaotic scenes in Turkey show a melee of citizens, police and the military, some trying to restore order and others to perpetrate an attempted coup.

Broadcast in real time via mobile phone, like every latest earth-shattering crisis or terrorist attack, this time it’s coup de tat as captured by shaky-cam reality tv. But like a lot of reality TV, the emerging situation is confused. Army tanks are in the streets overrun by the public waving Turkish national flags. There are reports that the coup has failed while others say the would-be military usurpers retain some ground.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan returned from his holiday on the Mediterranean coast and also via cell-phone, called ‘his Turkish people’ to defend the state. Crowds of public responded and took to the streets despite the fact he’s an unpopular and increasingly authoritarian ruler. Even marginalised groups in Turkey are defending the government, and at least 47 civilians are dead in the process. But in taking to the streets, the public, are more defending the principle of democratic rule, than the (currently marginal) incumbent.

Indeed, one could be forgiven for imagining public, as well as military support for a change of President. Erdoğan has overseen a crack-down on human rights and the media. He faces increasing disenchantment from the public, though received 52% popular support at the (second, run-off) election last November. He is seen by some, (including within the military) to have betrayed important principles of state secularism, enshrined since the founding of the modern Turkish state. Allegiances with the US, Kurdish resistance, and involvement in, tensions within and spill over from neighbouring Syria have helped create domestic insecurity. Recent car and suicide bomb attacks show that terrorism targeting innocents, to paraphrase Clausewitz, is like politics; modern war fought by other means. As victims of such consequences of bad policy, the public can eventually vote governments out, but the military can stage a coup.

Erdoğan blames the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen and his supporters ‘of betraying the nation and orchestrating the coup’. But like other opponents of Erdoğan, from members of the public, to opposition parties and socialist groups, the reported view of the cleric himself, is that the current, rotten democracy, is better than no democracy at all.

Gülen apparently condemns the attempted coup. He says “Government should be won through a process of free and fair elections, not force” and that’s a view shared by protestors in the street atop the army tanks and carrying out ‘citizen arrests’ of military coup-makers. They say they don’t support the government, “but they do support democratically elected government itself”.

Turkey has applied a curfew and martial law to try and install calm and order. Democratic rights are curtailed to try to save democracy. But even at the best of times democracy can create perverse results. Despotic leaders are elected. Governments voted in by the people, for the people, unwind and redefine the social contract, leaving citizens exposed, unprotected, sometimes victimised by unjust rule. Some of our oldest and most mature democracies are the most militarised, the most unequal; They wage war upon their own people as well as the people in former colonies and far flung states for oil or power. For many of those ‘leading’ democracies, democracy itself in other countries is less of a sovereign value and less important than geopolitical support and access to military bases. In fact paradoxically, successful coup-makers in Turkey could well attract American support, as they did in Egypt, because strategic geopolitical alliances on the red-hot borders of the Middle East, are more important than internal peace and democratic representation.

Democracy continues to contain its own contradictions around the world. In spite of the ‘Democratic Peace Theory’, it’s questionable whether democracies fight less with each other, or others generally, or whether they just export their conflicts more elsewhere.

Democratic rights, like economic and social rights, are distributed unfairly and unevenly. Violent dissent, terrorism, marginalised populations, injustice, inequality of representation and of outcomes show democracy still has a long way to go in serving all and mediating securely for peace. Democracy is used to legitimise and justify policies that don’t have public support.
But democracy still has recognised value among the range of instruments for mediating diverse public expression and for achieving a modicum of common good. It’s clearly a work in progress and must be accompanied by other active and passive instruments like a range of freedoms, protections and the rule of law. It’s by no means perfect in its implementation as the election of oppressors, war mongers and right wing reformers reveal. As Winston Churchill said, ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others’.

This week someone told me I should avoid protesting the injustices and wrongs I see perpetrated by the National Government because they’re legitimately elected to govern, whether I like it or not, by means of representational democracy. I replied that I’ll hold onto my right to protest against government failings – partly because they’re failings and wrongs, and partly because in a democracy I have a recognised right to do so. I’ll hold on to the fight to change that government too, through unequal, but principled means. So despite its failings, until there’s something better, long live democracy, here in New Zealand, in Turkey, and around the world.

The working class citizens of Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland will be cheering the ‘bravery’ of the Brexit voters who delivered the surprise victory to the ‘Leave’ campaign in the British European Union referendum. For the dispossessed, disenfranchised, poor, and rural voters; those ‘left behind’ by globalisation and mainstream economics, the Brexit vote gives the middle finger to pan-national institutions who impose inflexible, remote bureaucracy, austerity and neo-liberal ‘solutions’ to the problems created by capitalism.

But political parties have warned of a countervailing risk. Giving the EU credit for labour policies negotiated by unions, supporters of the ‘Remain’ campaign point to allegedly progressively higher standards of human, environmental and workers’ rights which may be lost as Britain develops its own policies, even though in some cases British standards are higher than the EU’s. But the loss of economic scale and critical mass provided by the European market, and the spectre of exit itself, may give authorities an excuse for more austerity and social service budget cuts, rather than flexibility to support more. With markets, temporarily at least, in panic mode, and early threats of market contraction and recession, conservative governments will be further able to justify budget cuts and austerity, with the greatest impacts on those already disadvantaged, powerless and poor. Indeed, British Chancellor George Osborne has already warned that the loss of billions of pounds of EU investment “could only be filled through tax rises and more public spending cuts”. Brexit may become not the solution to austerity, but the justification for more.

Those Brits “embittered by poverty”, humiliated by long term unemployment, despairing of underfunded services, and housing shortages, have found a foil to rally against in the European Union, and a voice for expression in the ‘Leave’ vote, even though the EU is peripheral, barely causal, to many of their concerns. Capitalism’s consequences of growing inequality and impoverishment won’t be solved by exiting from the EU itself, but may even make matters worse.

When international neo-liberalism is the model, sovereignty is a myth, and the limits of state intervention are determined not by the government but by the market. And these markets are too big to fail. The Bank of England is reassuring investors and markets that it will do everything possible to steady the economy. But there have been no similar promises to workers, that all action will be taken to provide job security in this time of potential turmoil, or the homeless, that their basic needs will be addressed. Ultimately, the European Union is and always has been, first and foremost, an economic pact, not a social one. But the initial offer of £250bn from the Bank of England to other banks in support of economic stability is particularly galling in that it was speculation on the outcome of the vote that has left the markets overexposed today. As in the Global Financial Crisis, once again they’re being rewarded by the state for dodgy gambles, although clearly there’s a whole economic system at stake.

The Brexit vote is being read as a victory of racist rhetoric and anti-immigrant dissent. By preying on fears of Britain losing its Britishness, and harking back to nostalgic nationalist pride, ‘Leave’ voters, it’s suggested, have been manipulated into believing it’s the EU and immigrants and refugees, that are responsible for joblessness, homelessness and reduced state services.

Net migration in the UK has grown from about 37,000 people on average every year from 1991-1995, to an average of 249,000 p.a in 2011-2015, but in 2014 for example, only 45% were from the European Union, with the majority from the Commonwealth countries, legacies of colonialism. And of course, immigration is a two-way street with British citizens continuing to emigrate in considerable numbers around the world today. Instead of being directed at immigrants, the rightful target for the anger about housing and job shortages, are governments who strip back the welfare state, provide inadequate security for workers, the ill and the poor; and the multinationals that shift their manufacturing offshore, seeking lower wages and less protection elsewhere, so domestic consumers, in a false economy, can buy ever cheaper goods at home.

The Brexit vote has exposed other divisions in Britain with gaps in the preferences of young and old, town and country, rich and poor. 64% of young people under 24 voted to remain in the EU while only 24% wanted to leave. Only 33% of those over 65 voted to stay, but 58% wanted to exit. Some young people say older generations (with “less years to live”) have vetoed their opportunities for travel and work. However, various degrees of association could be negotiated, that allow Britain borderless passage and trade deals, without representation or votes on wider European Union decisions. Brexit isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game.

The ‘Leave’ vote prevailed in almost every region, in Wales, the English Shires, North and South, but the ‘Remain’ vote was dominant in London, the cities and Scotland. That highlights a huge level of dissent with not just the EU, but with government institutions more generally, with people economically struggling outside thriving London, and seeking more self-determination, better economic fortunes, “sovereignty”, more accountability from political elites, less bureaucracy, all condensed in sentiment against the ‘monolithic’ EU.

Boris Johnson in the ‘Leave’ corner, contended that Britain could be more powerful and successful outside the EU, but this remains to be seen. As second largest economy in the EU, Britain’s departure from the trade bloc won’t be an end to UK-European trade, though a huge amount of extraction from current trade agreements and renegotiation of new ones will eventually be in order. This possibly offers new opportunities for countries like ours disadvantaged by the UK’s initial entry to the EU’s precursor in 1973. The formal entrenchment of Britain in the EU has taken over 45 years to develop, and its extrication won’t happen overnight either. Unless the banks freak out and go off the rails, there’s no reason why a moderated, negotiated business as usual approach won’t smooth the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU from here on in. There are lots of incentives for governments, banks and businesses to keep a cool head, and self interest in sustaining the prevailing economic order is one of them.

But the Brexit vote has sparked a flame that is heating up the coals of dissent elsewhere. The Scottish preference to remain in the EU is contrasted with England’s preference to leave. No doubt calls for another referendum on Scottish independence will emerge. Ironically, England’s self-determined right to leave the EU might reinvigorate Scotland’s self-determined right to leave the UK. The Brexit vote could undermine not just the EU, but the UK itself, furthering a dis-United Kingdom. The contagion effect is also likely to be felt in Continental Europe with the Left in Southern European countries and the Right in France, Germany and elsewhere all using the Brexit vote to defend their own resistance to the EU.

Whether a ‘triumph of democracy’, or a ‘failure of reason’, a ‘revolution’ or a ‘crisis’, the Brexit vote has exposed weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the walls of Fortress Europe. The EU stared down Grexit, but failed to withstand Brexit. We will watch in half-fearful fascination, and wonder, who, and what nexit?

The attempted media distractions of Max Key photoshopped in his undies were derailed this week when he indiscreetly posed with a cigarette, but how cringe-worthy it was that his fashion poses even make news. He’s famous only for being the son of someone famous, laying claims to authenticity because his parents both once lived in state houses (lucky them), and using the same inane comments as his dad “at the end of the day”; this week, mainstream media’s focus on celebrity went to new lows. And that’s saying something!

Elsewhere in the media though, more serious issues got due focus. Overcrowding; Whole families living in cars while state and private investment houses sit empty; Kids trying to study for exams under street lights while living in vehicles. Personal debt up to almost half a trillion dollars, or more than $100,000 for every New Zealander. The overdependence on property investment leading to a precarious economic state, with economists saying ‘the housing bubble will burst’, ‘it’s not a matter of if, but when’.

Governmental responses are too little, too late. Widespread financial ignorance (illiteracy), an undiversified economy and incentives of low interest rates and tax distortions, means the housing market dominates debt and investment. Releasing more land at the region’s margins to improve housing supply (beyond the thirty year’s provision in the draft Unitary Plan) will be ineffective, limited by the capacity of the building sector. Already skilled tradesmen are in short supply. Try getting small job building work done in the region these days and everyone will tell you they’re too busy. There’s up to a year’s delay on building contractors. The Council are forced to decline one in three building inspections as cowboy operators take short cuts or don’t know what they’re doing. There are only so many professionals to do the work. And of course land bankers will hold on to property and release it for development when they can maximise returns – rather than flooding the market. And as new development opportunities come on stream, lending criteria are tightening like a noose around the neck of potential new home buyers who will increasingly struggle to meet new deposit and repayment limits in the overinflated market.

Apparently home ownership is at its lowest level in 60 years, but the housing market is overleveraged, a huge proportion of house sales are to speculators, rental expenses limit attempts of families to save for mortgage deposits, 33,000 houses in the Auckland region are unoccupied or not fully used. That all indicates that someone is buying all the houses, but it sure isn’t the homeless.

All those empty and underutilised houses around the region could go a long way to accommodating Auckland’s homeless and displaced. The government has other levers at its disposal besides freeing up more land to improve accessibility and affordability of housing -stop selling off state houses!, impose rent controls on private stock, stop subsidising speculation through tax rules and accommodation supplements.

Housing is a basic universal right. Article 25 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights says ’Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services’. A hedge is not a home, neither is a bus stop or a car. It rightly alarms many compassionate New Zealanders that we have become a country, and a society, that otherwise generally accepts and ignores homelessness, people sleeping on the streets, out in the open, and in makeshift shanties, on footpaths, under bridges, and in public parks, while elsewhere baches and holiday homes, and speculative housing investments sit empty. People on Queen street walk unseeing past beggars. People sleep in shop doorways in the suburbs. The homeless are moved on from the shelter of public buildings even when it’s late at night and they have nowhere else to go.
People living on the street and in cars, is no accident, but a direct symptom and result of inequalities in society – Unequal access to finance, unequal pay, unequal social relations based on ethnicity, education, status and gender; unequal lending criteria. The housing crisis is a distribution crisis built out of inequality as much as a shortage of supply. While many investors and home owners have dangerously put all their eggs in one basket, other groups in society don’t get any eggs at all. Until governments address fundamental inequalities in society, these distributive injustices will remain, and perpetuate through generations as the young, and poor people of today find it increasingly difficult to afford to rent or buy a home.

The other scenario is an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots as those already in the housing market see their values continue to rise, with prospects for more lending on equity accrued, and eventually a popping of the housing bubble leading to a potentially radical rebalancing of property values, causing wider macroeconomic instability, mortgagee sales and grim prospects for all. Then at least some of the current ‘haves’, may encounter what it’s like to be without a home too. But that’s not something we should aspire to, and which we futilely rely on the government to address.

Was anyone really surprised that this year’s government budget was an underwhelming affair, ‘business as usual’ (with an emphasis on business), conservative in terms of expenditure on the disintegrating social fabric of our country, containing only token gestures to gloss over but not to reform inequities?

This budget and this Government were never going to address homelessness. On the one hand, Ministers are not sure if they agree that a crisis of homelessness even exists. On the other hand, they reject tax and other controls to address housing unaffordability and unavailability – but whip out ideologically driven, draconian, ready-made solutions such as freeing up yet more land on city fringes for development, threatening to remove council control over planning decisions, fast tracking consents, and removing residents’ rights to defend their local environments. But these moves are pre-emptory given the imminent decisions on thirty years’ residential land supply signalled in Auckland’s Proposed Unitary Plan; inappropriate, given the council’s role in land use planning, representing communities, and providing infrastructure; ill targeted given that the liberalisation of development controls will put even more pressure on the construction sector’s limited capacity to build quality houses; and inevitably ineffective, given poor peoples’ borrowing limits, and existing high house prices. As economist Shamabeel Eaqub says, government’s policies directed at generating ‘new housing, …focus on the affluent, rather than the poor’.

This budget contains some targeted education funding for the most needy children – at the expense of schools’ general operating budgets; some targeted funding for intensive case work to get young people into jobs; and support for the integration of released prisoners back into the workforce. But this government was never realistically going to take steps to improve the conditions of those most in need; to address mental and physical health problems at cause; to correct the structural causes of inequity, poverty, despair. There are no answers to those problems within the current model. Higher pay, less wage slavery, safer working conditions, more dignity in the workplace, a living wage. These things are an anathema, untenable in an economy that seeks to extract maximum value and profit, and minimise costs of labour and externalities.

Bill English’s budget speech apparently mentioned growth ten times, and inequality once. But then this is a budget that increased military and intelligence operational spending by $479 million, on top of a base budget of almost $2 billion, but only provided an extra $200 million for social housing. Yet our society is more threatened by socio-economic inequality than it is by terrorism or invasion.

The budget was never going to improve fresh water quality for its intrinsic, recreational and environmental values. Instead, the budget allocates funds for freshwater enhancement (ameliorating the worst effects of intensive dairy capitalism on behalf of the industry) but also subsidises irrigation schemes and pins future economic hopes on pollution’s source – more intensive dairy production, and more nitrates and run-off and more contaminated rivers.

Pre-budget promises of good things to come for conservation, came to nought, with a real-world reduction of the Department of Conservation’s budget, despite our country having about 800 endangered or threatened species – so many they even have their own ambassador! DoC’s on the ground work is undermined by ongoing funding cuts, this year a reduction of 14% for the Department’s core business of ‘Management of Natural Heritage’ – care of native animals and habitats. DoC’s opex is down 9% from last year, and overall funding is also 9% less than before. While $12 million has been allocated to help small communities provide toilets to support tourism, this government that sees the natural world as a commodity to be marketed and traded, not one to be protected for its natural values. Species and habitats are apparently less important than ever.

The budget has been criticised for being like a band aid on a serious injury. The indicators of inequality, homelessness, hopelessness, 146,000 people unemployed, 200,000 children in poverty, epidemic suicide levels, a precariat workforce in a heavily indebted, precarious, narrowly focused, undiversified economy, all show a seriously injured society indeed.

This budget and this government were never going to provide the structural tools and address the structural challenges of a deregulated, speculative, unequal society. Addressing the chasm of income disparity would require the removal of privileges, the redistribution of advantage. It would require revolution over reform, and this budget at best attempts to cover up or provide a symbolic salve while entrenching the pathologies arising from the model itself. This is a government that’s looking out for the political gains of less taxes, of an ideology of less government and more business. It’s a government that follows the market, not one that leads society.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/28/budget-entrenches-societys-pathologies/feed/19Privatised profits and socialised costs: What the government was elected to do.https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/04/30/privatised-profits-and-socialised-costs-what-the-government-was-elected-to-do/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/04/30/privatised-profits-and-socialised-costs-what-the-government-was-elected-to-do/#commentsFri, 29 Apr 2016 22:04:31 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=71017

We’ve got an Auckland housing affordability and a housing supply crisis. We’ve got an economy overloaded with private debt. Headlines report an anxiety epidemic, a P epidemic and an obesity epidemic all at once. Scientists show we’re in the midst of various environmental crises.

In many ways these are all linked. But it’s not that the housing market is on a sugar or P fuelled binge, even though it seems like it. For those already with a toehold in the Auckland property market, buying more houses is an individually rational choice. There’s more money to be made in housing investment than in most jobs, and low interest rates mean debt has a small price to pay compared with escalating capital gains. Poorly managed sprawl, and transport and urban design contribute to unhealthy personal and social health outcomes. Modern lifestyles are taken up with commuting and sedentary work. International markets set up incentives for concentrated investment in certain sectors like farming which then of course leads to concentrated adverse effects.

The free market means we have access to easy global credit, housing pressure driven by positive tax incentives, sugar filled junk food and liquor stores on every street corner, and a political-economic regime that owes more loyalty to transnational megacompanies protected by grand sweeping international agreements, than to its own voters.

Great efforts are made to liberate, enable and empower market forces, and let no domestic legislation, tax or tariff stand in the way of trade. The market is seen as a solution to everything from poverty to conservation of threatened species.

But if the free market is king, and wields the hallowed invisible hand that leads to the optimum distribution of goods for society, it doesn’t explain why the dairy sector warrants government subsidies for immigration schemes, or why roads get more subsidies than rail, or why debt levels are unsustainable but banks are too big to fail. Except that free market ideology is a thin disguise for preferential treatment of some (private) sectors and the disadvantage of others – often those with genuine public or environmental good.

So we have almost less investment in public good services such as environmental protection than we do in commodifying that environment through tourism promotion or development. Regulations are supported only insofar as they actually sustain and protect economic development – with the minimum done necessary to avoid the worst injustices with maximum profit. The welfare state and education systems support the latent workforce with the potential and skills for deployment in jobs as, when and if the economy requires them, but not for freedom of thought or self-determination.

In other cases, as Joseph Stiglitz argues, often the reason the invisible hand is invisible, is because it’s not there. The market isn’t delivering the optimum outcomes beneficial for society as a whole, but rather, externalities that either go unaddressed, or require rate and tax payers to pick up the tab, so that either the environment, the public or future generations pay the price for corporate profit.

So it is with obesity caused by the advertised, state sanctioned proliferation of junk food, and the tragic effects of alcohol harm; Environmental effects caused by overfishing, overfarming, polluting, point and non-point source contamination; The private car culture; Economic effects of a distorted investment market that favours housing speculation and sprawl. 99 people died at work last year because business profits come before workplace safety. The invisible hand is invisible or at least ‘hands off’ when it comes to protecting worker’s safety or security outside the limited sphere of operations required to meet minimal operating and reputational requirements other than to maximise profits.

With all these consequences for health, home availability and affordability, and environmental survival, the free market isn’t really free. Many laws and taxes are socially regressive and have relatively disproportionate impact on poorer people rather than companies or land owning upper classes. (Note the low taxes paid by big corporations in NZ, and also the harsher penalties for crime that apply to certain ethnic and social groups – ie those who aren’t professional white men). The ‘free’ market imposes massive costs on the environment, the commons, future generations and workers both here and in developing countries. The free market is freer for some than others. That same hand that’s almost invisible for protecting workers and the environment is conspicuous, flexed and clenched into a fist when it comes to protecting private property and profits.

But that’s part of the neo-liberal agenda’s success. It tells a convincing lie, that unhindered the market delivers what’s best for society. That if we all worked harder, longer, for greater parts of our lives, we could be rich too. That individuals are responsible for whether they find themselves with either extreme wealth or poverty. That if you’re a young person, you too can enter the housing market if you just forego that BMW, $200 bar tab and twice yearly trip to Bali. The lie tells us that private contractors provide as good a service for essential public works such as hospital food and prison management, even schools, as traditional public service providers.

But market failure is alive and well. In all those epidemics and crises of effects and externalities that have arisen from market activity, we see the negative side of the free market, profit imperative. In building roads, irrigation schemes and tourism infrastructure, in minimising workplace health and safety rules and worker protection, in the installation of private contractors in public services, this is a system that privatises the profits of trade, and socialises the costs.

But inequitable distribution of profits and costs, and unsustainable economic development in the interests of the few shouldn’t be read as a failure of leadership by this government. That’s what the government was elected by its supporters to do. As long as the government keeps delivering on those expectations, for lower taxes, higher house prices and the preconditions for more (even unsustainable) growth, they’ll continue to be re-elected.

Alarmist New Zealand Herald headlines condemned a Housing New Zealand tenant for taking in boarders. The article repeated neighbours’ complaints about the woman tenant; that she was renting out rooms, and had built a structure in the backyard. According to the media article, the woman and her occasional tenants live in a $1.4 million home in upper-class Freeman’s Bay, as if poor people shouldn’t share their expenses, or live in ‘flash’ areas, though $1.4million is hardly a huge amount for Auckland these days. You’d think our main daily newspaper would have more important things to write about than hearsay based on apparent jealousy from wealthy residents aimed at the poor. But then at the same time the Herald uncritically celebrates the elite British Prince and Princess’ ‘Royal Tour’ of the Indian region, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Gossip and celebration of elites is what passes for news there these days.

Elsewhere, the tax department pursues tradesmen doing cash jobs, while hypocritically mega-rich multi-national corporations evade taxes with legal trusts, offshore investments and other dodges, and Facebook and Google Inc et al in New Zealand pay only slightly more tax than the above-average citizen. Other times there’s the hysteria, because, of the 285,000 beneficiaries across the country, 927 defrauded the state of about $30million. A 2014 report estimated total benefit fraud at about $80 million a year while tax fraud was off the scale at $2billion. And of course tax fraudsters are much less likely to go to jail for their crimes than those who claim benefits to which they are not entitled.

There’s careful crafting of a public perception that overstates the impact of benefit fraud and crimes committed by the poor, and downplays institutionalised racism, inequity and inequality that create poverty to begin with, so that if you have a big family, or you’re a young male Maori, you’re really only half the citizen of someone white, or rich or living in a big, privately owned house in Freeman’s Bay.

There are the claims from businesses that paying workers a living wage or improving health and safety at work will cripple the economy and undermine the very profitability of business, while CEOs are paid millions of dollars a year. The Minister of Finance complains that New Zealand workers who don’t chose to work long dangerous hours on farms are ‘pretty hopeless’ as a justification for preferring immigrant labourers who don’t know or care about their rights to safe work.

Widows and cancer sufferers are made to actively seek employment. Councils consider a ban on begging so even if there are increasing numbers of poor, homeless, addicted or dispossessed, shoppers won’t have to see them. Housing speculation drives the prices up and out of reach for many, especially the young, while those born at the right time with access to equity are able to acquire multiple houses. Low paid fast food workers in global chains are forced to threaten strikes for basic rights and security as employers seek to maximise profits and minimise costs at workers’ expense. Even in the public sector health care workers are reduced to threats of strike action to get their own employers to address capacity limits, dignity and safety in the workplace.

Transnationally, the TPP promises free trade and open access to our markets by overseas producers; read as job losses, downward wage pressure locally and environmental and labour exploitation offshore. It represents a victory of consumerism and globalised production against nation based struggles for workers’, consumers’ and environmental rights.

Be under no illusion, the narrative and the practice of the unholy alliance of state, corporations and the media, is one that continues to come from an increasingly powerful elite, the dominant capitalist class, directed against the poor. The narrative carries the line that workers are lucky to have a job, they should put up with what they get, and should be grateful for accommodation, employment, social welfare safety nets, and other concessions offered by the ruling political and economic class. It’s like employees owe their bosses a duty of obsequious genuflecting gratitude, and should put up with anything, especially if the workers are uneducated, desperate or young.

The struggle for any wage, for a living wage, for job security, for safe work; and the call for state assistance in times of desperation, as offshore manufacturing increases and domestic jobs disappear, remains a struggle based on class inequalities and resistance to exploitation. Capitalists continue to seek reduced costs, taxes and tariffs and to engineer instruments that allow them to maintain and increase their property and monetary wealth. Workers hope more simply for jobs, homes and food for their families, maybe retirement at 65. But modern capitalist economics continues to be based on long term exploitation of natural resources, the environment, workers and the working class.

The extreme accumulation of wealth using legal (if immoral) instruments while elsewhere in the country and the world, people starve, highlights the contradictory -and ultimately destabilising- nature of capitalist exploitation. But every time there’s a headline that highlights the ‘antisocial behaviour’ of a minority, a beneficiary, a homeless person or an addict, there’s an implicit judgement condemning the poor and poorly functioning citizen for failing to contribute economically and for bringing the capitalist model into disrepute. Having a residual pool of labour is one thing, but we don’t want them ‘sponging off the government and the taxpayer’ or living in state houses in wealthy suburbs or making our streets look untidy when we’re shopping on the high street.

You will read about the negative impacts of the demands of workers, or the burden of the poor or poorly educated, on society, but you won’t read a critique of the wider conditions that created their poverty or the indignities they suffer in poorly paid jobs or overcrowded houses, or when dealing with state agencies. The class struggle will continue in both the workplace coal front, but also in the media as the ideological apparatus of the capitalist elite promulgates its distractions and disguises and continues to blame the class victim instead of the cause – the class structure itself.

Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne looked reasonable and pragmatic in his response to the latest evidence from eminent institutions this week that the war on drugs does more harm than good. Mr Dunne repeated his call for an approach to drug law reform based on ‘compassion, innovation and proportion’. Meanwhile, other political parties were caught behind the tide of public opinion. It was disappointing that there was little sign of leadership or intelligent engagement on the issue of drugs in society from the major parties. National’s obviously a non-starter for any constructive change from the status quo that gives knighthoods to liquor barons and safe National Party seats to tobacco lobbyists. Labour said it wasn’t even thinking about drug reform, thereby ignoring a significant health and justice issue and condoning current harm and persecution. New Zealand First played up to populist fears with claims about upholding traditional values (which assume alcohol is ok but cannabis is not). But even the Greens don’t have a current position on cannabis reform, apparently forgetting their founding focus on addressing the social injustice caused by prohibition. It’s not like the harm from drug prohibition is a new issue, or one that’s not progressing elsewhere, but overall, the mainstream parties were too scared or too conservative to meet Peter Dunne’s challenge of well-informed discussion focusing on health impacts rather than crime.

Emerging UMR public survey results show a softening in public attitudes to the use of medical marijuana to alleviate the pain and suffering of those who are terminally ill. In New Zealand’s celebrity culture, it helps the cause that sporting legend Martin Crowe, TV personality Paul Holmes, and figures of bravery and compassion such as former CTU head Helen Kelly and Pike River widow Anna Osborne admit to using cannabis to help with the pain and sickness from terminal disease and the side effects of legal pharmaceutical drugs.

But the Ministry of Health says 1.4 million New Zealanders – or about half the adult population have used illicit drugs, as did 485,000 of us in the last year alone. Cannabis is the most common illicit drug used, and it’s more common among adolescents. By age 21, 80% of young people will have tried it at least once.

Only 2% of cannabis users report any legal issues arising from use, and there’s been a decline in cannabis arrests and convictions since the 1990s. Official and unofficial ‘diversions’ have led to both police and courts exercising discretion about who and to what degree cannabis use is prosecuted. These are indications of an ‘unofficial’ softening of authorities’ responses to cannabis related crime, while resources are targeted at higher priorities.

Victoria University Law Professor Mark Bennett says ‘if… an offence will not be followed up on, and there’s little danger of detection and / or prosecution, there are questions (raised) from both a rule of law and a democratic perspective”. Police and Courts’ interpretation of the law undermines its consistent administration and subverts the will of Parliament – even if that will is almost 40 years old, outdated and impossible to enforce.

But NZ still has one of the highest incarceration rates for cannabis in the world. “Petty drug users fill our jails”. Since 1994 there have been at least half a million drug arrests – comprising 11% of all ‘crime’. 85% of these were for cannabis, and 87% for personal amounts. But obviously these arrests and convictions fall disproportionately on some areas of society. Police and court discretion is vulnerable to bias and abuse; it can be arbitrary and target certain subgroups. Indeed, Maori are three times more likely to be arrested and convicted for cannabis than non-Maori. Maori aged 17-21 make up 37% of those convicted of possession and/or use of an illicit drug or utensil. 2,800 people are imprisoned on minor drug charges, and nearly as many are imprisoned for possession of small amounts as are for dealing. Between 2007 and 2011 almost 13,000 people aged under 25 were convicted for drug offenses, and their custodial sentences cost the government more than $59million over that time. In the process, young people are criminalised, and have their future chances jeopardised for relatively minor acts that most people (especially their peer group) do at least once in their lives.

Research repeatedly finds that prohibition is not an effective way to treat drug problems in society. According to the Global Cannabis Commission Report and echoed by the 2011 NZ Law Commission Report and the latest John Hopkins University / Lancet article and more, ‘Harsh drug control regimes undermine the well-being and health of drug users and their communities’. They are ‘expensive to run, intrusive on privacy and socially divisive’. The laws are applied unfairly and in a socially discriminatory and inequitable way. They are inefficient (there’s no evidence of reduction in use after arrest or conviction). Many of these challenges relate to inherent ‘difficulties in attempting to criminalise a substance that’s widely used, therefore making the law weak on both ‘normative and practical grounds’. Criminalising cannabis use causes more harm than the use itself.

The recent UMR poll showed that the New Zealand public were evenly split over the question of whether cannabis should be legalised for personal use. Obviously fears remain about how to protect children and young people from harm, and from the effects of smoking. Even though there’s no evidence of an upsurge in drug use after liberalisation (in fact the opposite is true), the fears of a drug crazed society affected by ‘reefer madness’ are hard to dispel. But what is clear, is that in the face of reasonable and scientific evidence, the current cannabis law is illegitimate, unjustified, and unjust. It’s outdated, hypocritical with regard to the place of harmful legal drugs in our society, and punishes those who should be free to seek help on health grounds. New Zealand’s punitive drug laws fail the tests of ‘compassion, innovation and proportion’, and our mainstream political parties fail society at large with their lack of courage in dealing with laws that make cannabis use a crime.

DisclaimerChristine Rose is employed as Kauri Dieback Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

The Chair of Air New Zealand’s Sustainability Panel, British environmentalist Sir Jonathon Porritt, spoke to a group of decision makers in Nelson recently and warned about the unsustainable disjuncture between New Zealand’s branding and its reality. He expressed concern at the extent that businesses have been allowed to create wealth at the expense of the environment. Farming and forestry pollute and silt up waterways, tourism overwhelms natural values that attract people to start with. New Zealand had suffered “a phenomenal amount” of environmental damage, he said, from industry in pursuit of private wealth.

But exploitation is how surplus value is extracted in a capitalist system. Stripping value from nature and culture is how the economy grows in what economist EF Schumacher called a ‘cowboy economy’, like ours. Exploitation of paid and unpaid workers, of nature, of animals and of the commons; all creates hallowed growth. Debt produces both wealth and slaves to penury overnight. As we’ve seen in the news lately with reports of big corporations dodging taxes, costs of economic exchange fall disproportionately on the poor. Built on continuous extraction of ‘natural capital’ and discharging effects, wastes and externalities, from and into indigenous and natural commons, ‘growth’ has delivered increasing access to technological wants and needs but left wallets and hearts empty. Promises of the ‘trickle down’ effect have been well and truly broken as extremes between rich and poor become more entrenched, and former ‘Third World’ problems of poverty and related diseases, and homelessness become felt in our own communities. The underpinning of New Zealand’s ‘rock star’ economy, in particular, dairy, turns out to have been a fad after all. Our typical boom-driven investment seems to be bust. Huge debts, declining world markets and ecological overstretch now characterise last year’s wunderkind. The emperor wears no clothes.
A potential global slowdown means banks are putting a positive spin on growth rates that would have been considered tragic in the past. HSBC’s Australia/New Zealand Chief Economist, Paul Bloxham who coined the ‘rock star economy’ phrase to describe New Zealand in 2014, now says our low growth economy has reached ‘Nirvana’ because demand matches supply. Even then New Zealand’s wealth generation is largely led by immigration, tourism, service industries and construction – none exactly solid, tradeable foundations in an international market. It’s certainly no nirvana for workers whose pay remains constantly low because of lack of market movement. All stasis does for them is lock in a low paid status quo.

But maybe a low or no growth economy does offer some potential for society and ecology in a way not anticipated by mainstream economists. Certainly the oversupply of cheap oil has been good for the planet in a perverse way because it has undermined the viability of fracking and expensive types of extraction. A market correction in the oversupply of dairy will be disruptive to New Zealand’s economy and provincial communities, but good for rivers and streams (and cows), especially if the government ever stops subsidising irrigation schemes.

Schumacher contrasted the ‘cowboy economy’ model, with the ‘spaceship’ model. The spaceship model conserves energy and resources, whereas the cowboy version wants maximum exchange and throughput, regardless of the cost. The spaceship offers quality economic exchange, compared with the quantity sought by the cowboy.

In the spaceship, ecological limits are respected and restored. Over-reach beyond carrying capacity is addressed by downscaling or ‘degrowth’. Redistribution may be warranted. A steady-state economy is valued for its qualitative benefits instead of growth for the sake of increased benefits in the hands of the few. Labour assumes a personally and societally richer, value.

Debt, oversupply, inequality, environmental effects and economic imbalance may well prove to be self-correcting. There’s only so much exploitation the national and global economy can sustain before economic or ecological collapse occurs on either small or grand scale. Some dairy farmers for example, may go to the wall, but according to conventional economic theory this is the efficient operation of the market. Ultimately we have the chance to consciously respond to ecological and financial limits (such as toxic waterways, climate change, overproduction, unsustainable debt) or to be caught up in inevitable decline as natural or market feedback hits home. Mainstream political and economic interests fail to acknowledge the limits to growth, but those limits exist nonetheless.

With dairy prices falling and the economy flat lining, many are looking at tourism as the new economic saviour. Indeed, tourism has risen to one of the most significant foreign exchange earners for New Zealand, and beat dairy revenues in 2015. Tourism earned almost $30 billion in the year ending March 2015 including domestic tourism worth $18 billion. That’s 4.9% of GDP with a further 3.6% indirect economic value. Tourism generated economic activity estimated at $81 million per day, including $32 million in foreign exchange and $49 million from domestic spend. Foreign exchange from tourism has grown more than 40% since 2013, and NZ tourism industry associations have a growth target of $41 billion earnings by 2025. 12% of employed New Zealanders work directly or indirectly in tourism, with about 296,000 people working in the visitor economy, though these are often precarious and low paid jobs.

New Zealand’s natural environment and associated ‘brand’ provide our tourism industry with a competitive advantage, according to the Tourism Export Council of New Zealand. At least 35% of international visitors come here primarily to experience our natural landscapes and other values, and most of these are associated with the public conservation estate managed by the Department of Conservation. Our natural heritage shapes the Kiwi identity, and underpins much of the rest of our economy, such as primary production. However, lack of infrastructure and Department of Conservation funding deficits threaten to kill the golden tourism goose and to trample on its eggs.
Our biodiversity is already declining and visitor pressures exceed capacity, and when this is set in the context of wider environmental damage and enclosure of the commons, it’s hard to see how the tourism growth model can be environmentally or economically sustainable.

Most of the adverse press about the impacts of tourism and tourists focusses on freedom campers. While undoubtedly there are impacts from the sheer volume of travellers (freedom campers and otherwise) and a relative absence of facilities, this issue distracts from a wider systemic tragedy that trashes our special places, mismanages natural heritage, and alienates public open space that should be habitat for rare and precious species as well as places for the public to enjoy.
Even though DoC is in control of one third of the country’s land mass, including almost half of the South Island, only a quarter of the estate receives active conservation management, and only 8% receives possum, rat and stoat control.

There are also impacts on these special places that are beyond DoC’s reach. A single dog can wipe out a valued penguin colony that has intrinsic, species and economic value, from which there is little chance to recover. Hauraki Gulf islands are filthy with rubbish from urban Auckland while boat loads of visitors walk beaches and paths. Iconic marine mammals such as Hector’s dolphins and New Zealand sea lions face extinction from trawling entrapment. Penguins, a tourism symbol of the South, live on the margins of survival squeezed between farming and coastal campers and erosion. We’re failing to address both core pest management and wider conservation issues, threatening the key attractions for all those visitors on whom our economy increasingly depends.
New Zealand represents ‘wild nature, remoteness, peace and quiet, recreation, and natural heritage opportunities to ‘get away from it all’’. But with around three million overseas tourists last year, as well as all the kiwis, both ecological decline and visitor pressures, threaten those very values.
A lot of the pressure concentrates on key visitor points, such as the Tongariro crossing, Abel Tasman National Park, Milford Sound.… Magnificent ‘remote’ locations at the end of the earth, so full of vehicles and vessels, boats, buses, planes, helicopters and people that nature is dwarfed by the hubbub of visitors and ancillary activities. That means people also go further afield and to ever more distant areas searching for authentic ‘remote’ experiences along with everyone else on the trail. Those millions of visitors are both concentrated and dispersed.

Natural features and species are commodified into tourism assets. Penguin colonies are enclosed and treated as living zoos for busloads of tourists to watch as they come ashore after a day out foraging. Boat loads of people in love with the idea of seeing or swimming with wild dolphins harangue them from dawn to dusk and impact on their natural behaviour, affecting individual and species health. Multi-storey cruise ships dwarf the landscapes of Milford and Dusky Sound and Akaroa Harbour. Megabucks are charged for wildlife experiences that should be New Zealander’s free birth right, but which fail to mitigate negative impacts in the meantime.

Elsewhere independent travellers in private vehicles or any of the thousands of cars and campervans from the 35 fleets of hire vehicles, tour around stimulating the New Zealand economy, but visitors think they can pet sea lions, chase birds, smuggle geckos, climb mountains without any preparation. The results are aversion responses, displacement and poorer breeding success for native species as humans increasingly invade their space.

In the relative absence of adequate public utilities on the tourist trail, rubbish and toilet waste collects in laybys. When this is added to the background level of industrial and packaging waste lining our beaches, we’re definitely not so clean and green.

New Zealand’s tourism opportunities offer much to both kiwis and to travellers from the rest of the world. But we can’t just leave it to the market, while the Government gets the GST and tax revenues and the glory. To properly mitigate the impacts of the tourism boom, proper social and environmental infrastructure is required. That means DoC should be investing in more ecological conservation, not just cafes and visitor centres. It means educating the public about the sensitivity of ecosystems and their inhabitants, not just clipping the ticket and taking profit from admission fees. If we don’t collectively manage all these visitors, in ten or twenty years, the values and qualities we’re all here to see, will be so diminished that travellers will go elsewhere to find the authentic ,‘pure’ natural experiences we were once known for.

It’s short sighted to market our brand to overseas tourists on our natural beauty and heritage when biodiversity is declining, many of our animal ‘attractions’ are threatened with extinction, and rivers and bays are too polluted for swimming. New Zealand’s not a theme park, and even if it was, its natural ‘assets’ would deserve better care. DoC has an annual budget of only $340 million compared with $30 billion generated by tourism. The current model extracts economic value but puts little back.

Christine is currently traveling around the South Island, camping, tramping, cycling and kayaking.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/02/22/tourism-model-extracts-economic-but-gives-little-back/feed/28Kia kaha for a superbly orchestrated and performed act of power in defence of and against the statehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/02/06/kia-kaha-for-a-superbly-orchestrated-and-performed-act-of-power-in-defence-of-and-against-the-state/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/02/06/kia-kaha-for-a-superbly-orchestrated-and-performed-act-of-power-in-defence-of-and-against-the-state/#commentsFri, 05 Feb 2016 20:28:44 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=68120

Congratulations and kia kaha to all those who stood against the signing of the Trans Pacific Agreement, in Auckland and elsewhere around the country, culminating in creative, positive and powerful protests on Thursday.

John Key’s typical response to discredit opponents of the TPP who mobilised in recent weeks, wears thin in light of images of the massive protest crowds and photos of halls full of everyday men and women who feel disenfranchised by the Government’s eagerness to suck up to big pharma, big farmer and big multi-nationals.

Tim Hazeldine, professor of economics at the University of Auckland says we were actually sold out years ago, so relatively speaking the TPP only offers up more of what’s already gone. Experts generally agree this next step in the sell-out is ultimately not a good enough deal for New Zealand to justify the costs.

Logic makes one wonder why we’d be so happy to sign away sovereign legislative rights in a one-sided arrangement that requires a deregulated economy for New Zealand, free from tariffs, but doesn’t require the same of all sectors in all the other trading partners party to the agreement.
We’re like the little powerless kid in the playground giving all his marbles to the bigger bullies if only he’ll be allowed to play. In doing so, we’re too eager to give away our bargaining power, and our dignity.

But in marching along Queen Street in a massive throng, in blockading streets in a superbly choreographed and performed act of non-violent direct action, everyday New Zealanders have allowed us to retain some of our dignity intact.

But while we fear unfettered multi-national free trade, we also already live in a globalised world; in solidarity we identify with brothers and sisters across national boundaries unified by class allegiances, by social, religious and ethnic identities and by environmental concerns.
Given that these free trade deals have opponents on the streets and in the homes, offices and factories in countries around the world, we were speaking as and for global citizens in protesting the signing of the TPP at the SkyCity / casino convention centre in Auckland. And it’s no coincidence that the signing should occur there. In fact, giving away our right to import and export based trade protections, and offering up our laws to challenge by overseas companies through the Investor States Disputes Tribunal, is at best, a gamble.

Yet some of the quality of life we have in New Zealand is due to access to the best goods the global market can offer. But we get some of the worst goods on offer too – inflammable pyjamas, contaminated plastics, products made with slave labour and at huge environmental cost. Some kiwi sectors such as dairy have been favoured by free trade based access to big overseas markets. But many local jobs are now off-shore. Some large New Zealand companies such as Fonterra and Carter Holt Harvey are the multi-nationals small producers in other countries fear.

Even the sovereignty many of us worry will be lost under the TPP is a contested and somewhat artificial construct created to engender loyalty to the nation state which in itself can be seen as an unjust and illegitimate heir of colonial oppression.

The very fact that we’ve had to protest against the TPP (and asset sales and many other unwarranted acts of the state), and that it was developed in secrecy shows our democracy and sovereignty aren’t what we believe they should be.

Social change takes contests of ideas and of power. We saw that contest playing out over recent weeks and this week still. What it means to be a New Zealander is in flux, and sometimes duties of citizenship require taking a position that supports and yet transcends national boundaries. Sometimes, as with the TPP, defending the state requires acting against it. Standing up against the TPP, New Zealanders acted true to the interests of our sovereign self-determination, but represented dissident citizens from around the world too. A paradox of globalisation is that we can and should act local, meanwhile also thinking global, justifiably opposing the worst forces of multi-nationalism. In a magnificent show of power and strength, New Zealanders did this country – and citizens around the world, proud, and John Key hopefully dismisses that dissent at his arrogant peril.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/02/06/kia-kaha-for-a-superbly-orchestrated-and-performed-act-of-power-in-defence-of-and-against-the-state/feed/43Modern Life : The Best of Times and the Worst of Timeshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/01/23/modern-life-the-best-of-times-and-the-worst-of-times/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/01/23/modern-life-the-best-of-times-and-the-worst-of-times/#commentsFri, 22 Jan 2016 19:35:51 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=67514

2016, modern life. It’s a ‘Tale of Two Cities’. It’s ‘the best of times, and the worst of times’, a time of plenty for some, in a post-Dickensian dystopia, a Mad Maxian eco-apocalypse. As it’s been said, the future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed. The promises that capitalist democracy, technology and industrial agriculture and horticulture would free and feed the world have inevitably failed. We’ve got poverty and starvation in a world of stockpiled food supplies and planned obsolescence.

Epidemic levels of homelessness even in ‘civilised’ societies, barely raises a brow. We’ve got pharmaceutical monopolies controlling access to cures for diseases caused by modern life and its products. Today’s Unknown Soldier bombs desert-dwelling innocents using a game console from afar, in the interests of a war on terror and pursuit of peace.

It’s a planet of Eden gone bad. Capitalism and consumerism have squandered the flourishing forests, and the oceans and their inhabitants, and sent them up in smoke that now chokes cities and cooks the climate. We live in an era of unprecedented sociogenic extinction, where oceans are expected to contain more plastic than fish, and the fish contain radiation. Within a couple of decades it’s predicted much megafauna will be gone for good.

Neo-colonial manufacturing and production relocated to developing countries has displaced jobs elsewhere, bypassing hard fought labour laws and environmental regulation. Economies across the world are saturated with junk made from raw and precious resources so that the capacity of markets to keep buying is almost full.

In our own land of milk and honey, both these locally produced foodstuffs cost more than a litre of gas – and that was even before the price dropped below $30 a barrel. Credit is cheap and interest rates are low, but houses have never been more expensive or unaffordable relative to income – unless you’re an equity rich investor, and maybe have rich parents or a number one song. The lucky land owning classes often have beachside holiday homes and a ‘rental investment portfolio’. ‘Sir’ Russell Coutts who made his millions in the white mans’ sport of sailing big yachts, and beat New Zealand while skippering for America, builds a 650m2 beachside house while young (mainly dark) kids sleep in the bush and many (poor) people can’t find a home. Police illegally raided Nicky Hager’s home, when in fact he should be given a medal and police protection! Free education cost families $161 million last year, and access to tertiary education comes with a lifetime debt guarantee. Free trade offers up the country to willing buyers because Aotearoa actually is for sale. We have not one, but two referenda on the Clayton’s Choice change of flag, but riot police are conspicuously training in preparation for Waitangi Day.

It’s a pretty bleak prognosis if you lump it all together like that. Dark forces prevail, and even though we live in better times than those in any time in history, I suspect worse times await generations ahead. The mainstream media will tell you there’s nothing more important than the Kardashians, best and dressed celebrities and whether Lorde has broken up with her boyfriend according to Instagram.

Sometimes it feels like us critics of all this, risk just talking to each other through facebook and online media, keeping our anger (and compassion) alive, and venting our frustration and dismay while oblivious elites continue to eat canapes and sell us down the river. John Key in particular, retains his confident, untouchable position as most loved Chairman of the (monopoly) Board that New Zealand Inc has become.

Systemic change comes slowly – or it can come in a sudden hit – “punctuated equilibrium”. Wobbles in the world economic order and simmering crises of capitalism based on environmental, social, political and credit instability mean well established edifices can change or fall. And of course in ‘failed states’ around the world, and in often hidden ‘failed societies’, capitalism already has. One thing for sure is that change is inevitable, and at worst, we can help support a vision and narrative of social and environmental justice; of work with dignity, creativity, value in itself; of bounty and happiness (anyone remember laughter?). We can ‘wage peace’. By keeping that vision alive, we can set the preconditions for the better society we deserve, provide resilient solutions and alternatives in the face of uncertainty. We might even force change itself.

Desiderata says ‘in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it’s still a beautiful world”. And it’s wise to remember anthropologist Margaret Mead’s saying that we should “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/01/23/modern-life-the-best-of-times-and-the-worst-of-times/feed/4Dolphin Survival Depends On Kiwis Keeping An Eye On The Sea And On What We Eathttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/01/10/dolphin-survival-depends-on-kiwis-keeping-an-eye-on-the-sea-and-on-what-we-eat/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/01/10/dolphin-survival-depends-on-kiwis-keeping-an-eye-on-the-sea-and-on-what-we-eat/#commentsSat, 09 Jan 2016 23:31:20 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=67082

Summer is usually the time for fun visits and evening fish and chips at the beach. But dolphin advocates are reminding New Zealanders to keep an eye out for dolphins both at sea and ‘in their fish and chips’ this summer. Māui and Hector’s dolphin survival requires watching the sea and our fish consumption.

Māui and Hector’s dolphins are the world’s smallest and rarest marine dolphin, found only in New Zealand waters, and come in close to shore during summer. That means they can sometimes be seen from coastal hotspots around the country, but they are also at increased risk of entanglement in both recreational and trawling gillnets at this time. Gillnets are allowed in much of both Māui and Hector’s habitat, ensuring a downward trend in the dolphin population. Gillnets are the biggest known threat to the dolphins, accountable for up to 95% of human caused deaths. Scientists predict Māui could be extinct within 15 years unless this attrition is halted.

Maui and Hector’s dolphins are distinguished by their small size (about 1.8m max), black, grey and white colouring, and rounded dorsal fin. Anyone who spots one of the charismatic wee dolphins from shore or boat should report sightings to the Department of Conservation hotline 0800 DOCHOT. DOC maintain a sightings database which helps inform research and protection.

Verified sightings with as much information about location and time of sighting are essential for dolphin conservation. The public have the eyes on the ground, and can make a huge contribution to knowledge about the dolphins’ distribution. There are only about 55 Māui dolphins, but despite their low numbers, they are sometimes seen in the surf at busy West Coast Auckland beaches like Muriwai and Bethells-Te Henga. All sightings should be reported as soon as possible.

But the Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders group also reminds buyers of fish and chips this summer, to buy carefully given the overlap between New Zealand’s inshore commercial fisheries, and recreational set netting in much of Māui and Hector’s habitat.

New Zealand’s own fishing practices are driving Māui and Hector’s dolphins to extinction. Kiwis shouldn’t buy into that, by not setting nets in the dolphin habitat, (especially where it is illegal), and avoiding trawl caught fish.

This call follows Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders’ successful ‘ByCatch of the Day’ campaign launched in November highlighting the links between New Zealand’s commercial gillnet fishing and Māui and Hector’s dolphins decline. A petition launched at the time has attracted over 2000 signatures so far.

High profile set net entanglements of other species this summer have highlighted the risk of indiscriminate gill nets. All gill nets should be banned in Māui and Hector’s habitat given their precarious situation. In the meantime, consumers need to be aware of the unsustainable bycatch from New Zealand’s trawling practices, forging the path for these dolphins’ extinction.

In ‘This Changes Everything’, a critique of capitalism and climate change, Naomi Klein quotes a scientist who asks ‘Is the world fucked?’ The answer apparently, is pretty much yes, especially if we don’t change our CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, and basically our whole economic model. What we need is system change, not climate change.

Climate change reflects all the systematically bad things we’re doing to the planet – the destruction of vast global commons with wicked consequences. We’re burning fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow, and at this rate there might not be. Deforestation, habitat loss, extinction of species, polar ice melt, erosion, destruction of cultures as sea levels rise and storms swamp island homes…climate change is now. We’re squandering the carbon heritage of generations past and generations to come, and despoiling the whole planet in the process.

This weekend’s climate change marches in 2000 different communities around the world including 35 centres in NZ, show the people of this planet want action and not just more hot air from our ‘leaders’ at this week’s international climate change conference in Paris.

New Zealand makes a disproportionate per capita contribution to greenhouse gases, and our high standard of living, arguably adds both responsibility and ability to New Zealand’s efforts to address at least our own contribution to climate change. But at the conference this week, our country supports only a weak and underwhelming non-binding multi-lateral agreement on carbon emissions that shows no leadership at all. Agriculture, which comprises 48% of NZ’s carbon emissions is exempt from the Emissions Trading Scheme because other than decreasing the national herd size and intensity, there’s no way of reducing emissions. Addressing climate change is incompatible with the economic growth model. In fact, NZ proposes one of the weakest climate change action plans and has one of the worst pollution reduction records of all developed states attending, according to Russel Norman, new Executive Director for Greenpeace NZ.

But economic instruments like emission trading (pollution markets) won’t solve the climate change eco-apocalypse. Market systems are what got us into this problem in the first place. What we need is a whole new economic system, system change, not climate change.

After all, climate change is just the latest expression of a fatalistic commodification and abuse of the planet that is Coca-cola capitalism. It’s the model that is flawed, and we can’t use ‘green growth’ as a way out of environmental damage without creating more. We can’t continue to chop down rainforests and burn ancient peatlands releasing smoke, CO2, and destroying habitats without a kickback from nature. Capitalism is eating itself because it’s using up all the natural capital and polluting the free commons that underpinned its development in the first place. There can’t be infinite growth in a finite world. It’s estimated we’ve made 50% of species extinct in the last 40 years, a process called ‘the great acceleration’ in the effects of mankind, capitalism and industrialisation on the ecosphere. There’s only so much (so little) rainforest left, so many fish (so few), limited clean water, glaciers, biodiversity… and capitalism is reducing it to waste that’s clogging up the ocean and atmospheric commons. We can only externalise environmental effects to a limit given we live in a closed system and reports are that we have already pushed it over the brink.

Politicians have short, electoral cycle based time horizons, so it’s no coincidence that Bill English, Finance Minister, considers preparation for climate change effects “not a pressing issue”. Capitalism is too big to fail, and capital interests are too big for NZ’s ministers to get into a staring contest with. The government won’t go near its own ‘sacred cow’, dairy farming, and put measures in place to attenuate its effects. Just the same way Barak Obama refused to link clean energy with the bail out of the major car companies in the US after the Global Financial Crisis, crony capitalism is king. No wonder Parisian climate change activists have been sentenced to house arrest and protests have been banned. Leaders don’t really want their growth agenda disturbed by calls for alternative action.

But the response of the world’s public to climate change fears, is what provides hope, even if our leaders fail. We are the 99% and many environmental solutions lie in our hands. We are the power behind the ‘great transition’ to a more democratic, just system for all nature, humans included. Refusing to be part of a corrupt, ecocidal and wasteful system is within our capacity. Refusing to buy products with palm oil, not eating meat, riding a bike, picking up rubbish, planting a garden, participating in the informal and gift economy, creating and occupying new commons, forging new forms of creative resistance, these are all paths to a new economic and social model and a better environmental future.

Climate change is a deeply moral issue reflecting how we share the world with human and non-human others and what we leave for tomorrow. We know our political leaders are weak and incapable of taking action that would reshape the system that keeps them there. Let’s not give up, it’s up to us, to unFuck the World.

When organised murderous aggression such as the French ‘terror’ attacks, occurs on Western soil, there’s an increased immediacy of perceived risk to established civil order. Indeed, President Obama has called this latest violence, “an attack on humanity and the values we all share”. Tragically however, similar violence is the reality on the streets of many of humanity’s cities every day, sometimes perpetrated by the US itself. All violent aggression is an attack on humanity itself, and Obama’s sympathy also contains hypocrisy and rhetoric.

Social media and ‘live-from-the-scene’ broadcasts make attacks on the streets of familiar cities such as Paris and Sydney, hyper-real. There’s drama, tragedy and fear. There are villains and victims. It’s real-life reality TV. We can read Facebook posts from inside the hostage zone. We quickly adopt a trending sympathy hashtag so we can show our solidarity with those affected. Today, Twitter accounts “linked to Jihadists” are reportedly celebrating the French attacks. Meanwhile we can see the crime scenes uncensored; pools of blood, bodies, traumatised victims; the casualties of modern conflict and technology combined.

The Prussian Military theorist Clausewitz said war is politics by other means. Yesterday’s multi-site French massacre is war and politics by other means too. It has been carried out in classic ‘terrorist’ fashion. It’s a political statement that shows strength and penetration into ‘enemy territory’ (“our territory”!!) in an asymmetrical conflict. It is indiscriminate in its victims, but strategically as precise as America’s drone strike on Jihadi John. Through its tactics, and the interconnectedness of the media, it will have successfully invoked maximum fear. It taunts the military superpowers with the cunning and ruthlessness of its execution. Even while France prepares for the Paris climate talks with increased security, the state’s armed forces were no match for groups of (men) intent on destabilising Western security as a whole.

The current death toll is estimated at about 120 innocent victims, a tragedy for all concerned. It’s absurd that young people attending an American ‘death metal’ concert were gunned down at the gig. There are reports that Islamic State (IS) are taking responsibility for the acts of violence, and that perpetrators called out ‘It’s for Syria”, and “Allahar Akbar” while gunning down victims in the theatre. While conveniently conforming to stereotypical assumptions, IS also claimed responsibility for shooting down a Russian airliner over Egypt last week, with the loss of all lives on board. Acts of violence threatening European holiday destinations and neighbourhoods! It’s one thing when violence occurs in far flung, distant countries, to others, ‘foreigners’, those of a different religion or culture, from another ‘civilisation’. It’s another matter when victims of that war turn up in your country seeking refuge. It’s a totally different thing altogether when enemies of the West bring the fight from their home to yours and they’re undiscerning about who they kill. Europe as a whole probably feels decidedly less secure now.

One sure consequence of these attacks will be a continuation of the ‘war on terror’ and of terror itself. France is already vowing to avenge the attack, and the “hunt for those responsible” has begun. Border controls will be tightened. Personal freedoms will possibly be reduced while state surveillance increases. Prejudice against Muslims and refugees will no doubt increase, overlooking the fact that it’s violence at home from these same perpetrators that refugees are fleeing from too. Expect military and domestic security spending to increase. Recent history shows us none of this will make us much safer from either organised and co-ordinated, or lone wolf acts of violence. Meanwhile however, statistically, workplace accidents, road crashes and suicide will continue to be greater real threats to those of us on the Western side of the border.

When the Cold War ended and there were prospects for a ‘global triumph of liberal democracy’, the White House National Security Advisor and Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington counterpoised with his theory of the ‘Clash of Civilisations’. He argued that with communism no longer a credible challenge to capitalism, future wars would be fought along cultural lines, by civilisations, not countries. Huntington argued that “Islamic extremism would become the biggest threat to Western domination”. His theory used a simplistic, homogenising and arbitrary system for grouping the ‘civilisations’ into blocs such as Islam, Chinese, Hindu, African etc, and failed to recognise the tensions between and within the groups. He also downplayed the material conditions and real causal factors driving conflict.
But in proposing the clash of civilisations, with anti-Islamic focus as the new world (war) order, Huntington set the scene for the American and Western foreign policy and intervention that we’re witnessing now. Perpetuated by George W Bush’s defining the enemy as those states in the “Axis of Evil” (Iran, Iraq and North Korea), and “Beyond the Axis of Evil” in Cuba, Libya and Syria, we see a self-fulfilling prophecy unfold. Destabilised by Western invasion and removal of heads of state, in four of those six countries a new type of bogeyman has been unleashed to attract Western response and military attention. It’s no coincidence that the West has found a new enemy (with oil) on which to focus its antagonism. And it’s no coincidence that those forces unleashed, fight back. While undeniably evil, you could say it’s a direct response to that political theory put into practice, that brings terror onto our streets and our media channels, more directly than for decades before.

Our beautiful, economically developed, peaceful ‘God’s own’ country has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. More than one person takes their own life every day. The problem is bigger than the road toll, which is tragic enough. Since the coroner started releasing details of suicide in 2007-8, never fewer than 500 people per annum have succumbed to the ultimate expression of desperation. Figures indicate suicide attempts may be 40 times that rate. 51 people committed suicide In August last year alone.

Suicide rates are higher in deprived areas, and occurs among Maori almost twice non-Maori levels. NZ has the highest rate of suicide in the OECD for those aged 15-24. It’s disproportionately higher again for Maori in that age range. Last year the suicide rate was highest among those aged from 40-44. It’s clearly a national tragedy, a loss, a waste of good life, a sign that too many New Zealanders feel desperate, unvalued, worthless, hopeless and better off dead.

Governments are too scared to even talk about the issue, and therefore incapable of addressing it. Individuals and families dealing with the effects of mental illness and suicide say there’s a lack of support. Institutional responses are inadequate – even dangerous. There’s a ‘culture of denial’, a failure to take the problem seriously. Sometimes public mental health centres respond so poorly that patients die in, or having left, their care. There’s a failure to listen to the mentally ill and those who love them.

As the measure of society’s wellbeing, New Zealand’s suicide rate clearly shows us wanting. Mike King has described our suicide status as ‘a cancer’, but ‘without the daffodil day’. It’s an issue afflicting all ages, and in addition, hits families, friends and communities at large. It’s a serious indictment on our society. It’s the outward expression of something deeply wrong in how we deal with those challenged by modern life, and in modern life itself. It’s a reflection on both the causes of hopelessness, depression and anxiety, and how we treat and respond to mental health problems. But suicide reflects other pathologies evident in modern New Zealand as well.

The ‘Social Progress Imperative’ reports that New Zealand has a high level of social progress relative to economic performance. We have good access to basic education, fresh water and sanitation, personal rights. The ‘First World’ economic model meets our material needs as consumers– we have a choice of the latest fashions, smart phones and tv or car, but commodity fetishism in exchange for a life of wage slavery provides little of real meaning. It’s no wonder there’s anomie, alienation, disorientation at the crazy, unjust, unsustainable world. And despite the loving support of family and friends, an epidemic number of people choose to end their own lives year upon year upon year.

Indeed, the World Health Organisation reports that 47% of the population in Western countries suffer from depression, anxiety and addiction problems. Clearly economic development and modernisation comes with human and social cost. Other indicators prove this point, and in many ways New Zealand performs worse than most.

We have the fifth worst child abuse record in the OECD. A child is admitted to hospital every second day in NZ, with injuries arising from assault, neglect or mistreatment. 10-14 children each year in this country are victims of homicide. On average, a child is killed every five weeks. Most victims are under five years old, and 90% of them are killed by someone they know. A society that kills its young is an obviously unhealthy one.

This social pathology becomes self-perpetuating. Abused or neglected children are 25% more likely to suffer delinquency, teen pregnancy, low academic achievement, drug use and mental health problems than others. Indeed, New Zealand has one of the developed world’s highest teen pregnancy rates, the second highest abortion rate, and among the most drug use.

A 2011 United Nations report shows us performing among the worst nations in the OECD in terms of violence against women and maternal mortality. One in three women experienced violence from their partner between 2000 and 2010, we’re one of the worst countries in the OECD for sexual violence. A quarter of Kiwi kids have witnessed family violence. 27% have seen physical violence against an adult, mostly in the home. 24% of kids live in poverty, 180,000 go without the things they need.

But New Zealanders work some of the longest hours in the western world.
Despite our general living standards, development levels and modern society, and our reputation as open and friendly people, below the veneer lies a darker malaise.

Our post-colonial, uber-capitalist, neo-liberal system distributes goods and services conspicuously well, so we have cheaper credit and more consumer choice than ever before. But it’s a system that’s ultimately underpinned by a high level of self-harm. Too many individuals feel meaningless, worthless, unsupported and alone. The Government increasingly wipes its hands of collective support or responsibility, passing it to individuals, families, NGOs or the private sector, none of whom are in a position to address the causes of the problem.

We are all more than just consumers or customers, and our value doesn’t hinge on what colour we are, what job we have, or how much we earn. Mental health conditions including addiction, clearly need more understanding and support. Sadly, with our suicide and child abuse rates, our teen pregnancy and abortion statistics, our sexual and physical violence records, individuals within our society pass a poor and hopeless judgement on modern New Zealand every day.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/10/18/dark-malaise-an-indictment-on-modern-new-zealand/feed/16Refugee crisis exposes contradictions of ‘civilisation’ but a safe place to call home is the birth right of us allhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/09/06/refugee-crisis-exposes-contradictions-of-civilisation-but-a-safe-place-to-call-home-is-the-birth-right-of-us-all/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/09/06/refugee-crisis-exposes-contradictions-of-civilisation-but-a-safe-place-to-call-home-is-the-birth-right-of-us-all/#commentsSat, 05 Sep 2015 20:23:43 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=63127

The focus of the world’s attention on the refugee humanitarian crisis, in recent weeks, highlights many contradictions in our culture, our society, our ‘civilisation’, and our capitalist economy.
The age of the internet has given us freedoms, but costs. Freedom of information and access to uncensored, unmediated images, like never before. Refugees are no longer abstract, faceless, nameless victims, but little boys wearing shorts and sandals dead on the sand. Syrian refugees are men, women and children like us, in a real time exodus, civilians fleeing the cradle of civilisation. Some may be well educated, middle class, with their t-shirts and cellphones, but their cause is no less legitimate for that. Their cities are bombed, their societies destroyed, they’re persecuted for their beliefs, and they fear for, and sometimes lose their lives in the escape from a ‘home’ that no longer lives up to its name.

This is no hidden holocaust. The internet has given us the ability to see ‘others’ as ourselves, in desperate conditions. We can use social media to vent, mourn, share information, mobilise, inform debate, set the political agenda, rouse others, raise funds, offer refugees support and a home. But it comes with the costs of knowledge of horrors, that once seen, are unknowable. With knowledge of injustice comes responsibility to change it. Destroyed cities in the Middle East, in Syria and Gaza, drowned children, women and children between barbed wire and batons. Suffer the little children. But from such gross and visible suffering there should be no turning away.
In the response to unconscionable misery and sadness which is the plight of any and all refugees, we see humanity, and inhumanity. Even though refugee crises and the search for asylum in desperate conditions are nothing new, at the moment at least, the world’s attention is focused on this issue. We see humanity in the empathy and compassion shown by everyday global citizens offering moral and practical support, food and water, shelter, tolerance, friendship, solidarity and hope.

We’ve seen inhumanity in the racist responses of some, including many governments. We’ve seen inhumanity in the recourse to long winded policy processes (vague commitments to review the NZ refugee quota), and xenophobic nationalism. We’ve seen inhumanity in the causes that have given rise to refugees to begin with. There’s deep inhumanity in the arms sales, the drone strikes, the historical and contemporary colonisation, the very geopolitics of the Middle East that leads to ever greater instability, terror, and loss of life for ordinary citizens, not less.

The last few weeks have also been a roller coaster of optimism and pessimism. Pessimism at the failure of leadership in this Government and others. Pessimism at the nature of man (and I do use that term advisedly) that destroys families, societies, cultures and antiquities. Pessimism about where a solution to the chaos in war torn, ‘failed (destroyed) states’ could possibly lie, given the instability, oil resources, conflicting international interests, religious intolerance, absolute destruction, economic, social and psychological trauma in those countries today.
But ironically there has also been reason for optimism. Images of Germans welcoming busloads of refugees; Hungarian people offering food and water to those stranded at Keleti train station; Icelanders offering space for 10,000; Strong pressure on this Government from the good people of New Zealand, all offer hope in the face of despair. These highlight the courage of people, and the weakness of governments. A “welcome” as opposed to a heartless turning away.
The images of refugees on masse rushing through razor wire, forging through police lines, marching off with pride from Hungary en route to Austria have been terribly compelling. They show the triumph of courage over weakness, of organisation over impotence; A triumph of spontaneous self-determination against the odds, in the face of organised state resistance. It shows the paradoxical weakness of the European ‘Fortress’.

The New Zealand Prime Minister has sought to distract us from a global humanitarian crisis with shallow symbols of a false and dangerous nationalism. He offers us a Clayton’s choice of quasi-corporate logos as the standard for our country. But it’s a nationalism he would sell out to the world’s transnational corporations in a blink. It’s a contradiction that supports Kiwis as global consumers but limits the extension of universal human rights to a racially and economically selected few. He leads a government that sends our troops to Iraq at the cost of $25million but argues we can’t afford to offer refuge to more victims of war. His is a government that can rush through legislation to allow alcohol sales night and day during an international rugby competition, but won’t expedite policy to accommodate again, international victims of war.

A world of 52million refugees, is clearly a world divided. It’s a world of haves and have nots. Yet peace, security, equality, freedom, opportunity, recognition of the dignity of every person, a safe place to call home, is the birth right of us all.

Disclaimer Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

The killing of four takahe on Motutapu Island sanctuary is a tragedy on many counts. With fewer than 300 takahe left on the planet, that’s between 5 and 7% of the total population gone. The Guardian reports in terms of impact on an endangered population, it’s equal to killing 160 tigers or 93 giant panda. It’s a disaster for those four takahe and an insult to conservation, adding to the injury we’ve already inflicted on this curious and quirky species.

The accidental killing of the four takahe highlights significant other problems too. Something so astounding, so unbelieveable, so abhorrent, has to be evidence of systemic problems arising from the current Government’s conservation funding model impacting on the capacity of the Department of Conservation to do its job.

Everything about this picture is wrong. The Department of Conservation, following a ‘partnership’ model which devolves important operational functions to the private sector and volunteers, ‘contracts’ the Deer Stalkers Association to kill 600 pukeko on an island sanctuary. If we judge the case on the outcome, this shows a problem with the model, the funding, the level of discretion delegated away from DoC, and the conservation management approach on the island itself.

DoC apparently identified a problem with pukeko numbers on Motutapu, with fears that even though they’re not a ‘regular predator’ they might eat takahe eggs and young. Even though pukeko are also a native bird, (but clearly not an endangered one), DoC contracted the Deer Stalkers Association to kill them 2012, 2013 and again in 2015. 600 is a big pile of dead pukeko, and the place must look more like a bird blood bath than an island sanctuary for native animals by the end of it. Any animal lover should cringe at the mass shooting of pukeko as a conservation management strategy, for its wanton destruction of friendly, intelligent and sentient life. It’s clearly an ineffective approach if even on the third attempt 600 pukeko (and four takahe) are in the firing line.

An ethical approach to managing pukeko on Motutapu would require an evidence based approach, and a sound plan where risks are anticipated and avoided. More sustainable, efficient and humane techniques for managing the pukeko population should have been implemented prior to the introduction of the takahe. Overseas evidence confirms that ‘culling’ is an ineffective population management strategy anyway as in the long term, species will repopulate an area. Non-lethal control methods and egg management are clearly more ethical, and safe, than the wholesale slaughter of one of New Zealand’s most commonly recognised birds. That’s not to mention the subjectivity and speciesism inherent in DoC officials deciding that the risk to takahe chicks and eggs outweighs the lives of 600 pukeko this year alone.

But while the ‘why’ motive for killing 600 pukeko is questionable, the ‘how’ this event happened, is off the planet. The cascade of failings shows systemic problems with the Department of Conservation’s ‘partnership’ approach.

How did the Deer Stalkers kill four takahe when they were each satellite tagged and their location known? Clearly inadequate separation distances and precautionary methods were applied. How did the hunters fail to distinguish takahe from pukeko given the seriousness of the need for distinction?? DoC say the hunters were given a full briefing, and were instructed to only shoot birds on the wing. The briefing was not ‘full’ enough or was not understood, and as takahe don’t fly, the hunters must have failed to follow the rules and blasted their shotguns indiscriminately. How come the hunters failed to identify their targets (at least four times!) when using firearms in a public space? Supervision of these unskilled volunteers was clearly not what it needed to be, given the outcome.

Predation from pukeko proved less a threat to takahe than the impacts of volunteer hunters. A rare and special bird that has been brought back from the dead once already, was pushed back there a little bit more by a strategy that delegates sensitive tasks to those ill equipped for the job. Although a DoC worker also shot a takahe, on Mana Island seven years ago, there’s limited capacity for institutional learning from this in DoC operations, when most of the institution is gutted and volunteers now do most of the previous workers’ jobs.

The Deer Hunters Association have apologised to DoC and to New Zealand at large. Condemnation and dismay won’t bring the takahe back, but there’s time for the pukeko killing spree to stop. Mass killing of native birds is not an ethical conservation strategy, and indiscriminate killing is a hazard to conservation and to the public. DoC’s credibility has been severely damaged from this sad event. But the killing of the birds DoC is supposed to save, also shows significant problems with the broader ‘partnership’ model. In terms of lessons for the Government’s resourcing and management of the Conservation portfolio, this should be a wakeup call that’s the endangered species equivalent of Cave Creek. Professionalism and oversight are essential in conservation to avoid risks to people, and the environment.

Disclaimer
Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/08/23/faulty-unethical-conservation-model-behind-deaths-of-endangered-takahe/feed/18Solidarity with and for meat workers more important than everhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/08/15/solidarity-with-and-for-meat-workers-more-important-than-ever/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/08/15/solidarity-with-and-for-meat-workers-more-important-than-ever/#commentsFri, 14 Aug 2015 20:05:43 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=62389
The wealth of the Talley family is over $300 million. That’s more than any family needs to meet reasonable life time aspirations. It’s certainly enough to carry great currency in a country where family dynasties influence environmental and employment law. It’s an obscene amount when Talley’s workers face worsening employment conditions under increasing pressure to maximise throughput, long hours in dangerous settings, increasing casualization, real health and safety risks, threatened loss of seniority rights and a stripping away of union protections and voice.
But there’s a convergence of both class and racial injustice in the way the Talley family acquires companies, strips union and workers’ strength and pushes employment conditions to the wire in pursuit of yet more profit. Here’s a white family with more money than anyone could ever need, screwing thousands of (mainly) Maori workers and forcing them to work harder, increase process outputs, under less safe conditions, with fewer rights so the Talleys themselves can accumulate more.

More than 70% of AFFCO’s meat workers are Maori, in communities where alternative work options are few, where jobs are a scarce and valued commodity, and where loyalties to the industry are strong. With families to feed, workers do not take strike action lightly. But given the power imbalance between the employer and employed, workers have to stand together if they are to stand at all. In the long struggle against workplace oppression in AFFCO meat plants, solidarity between iwi, workers and unions has been key. The important force of this relationship was proven in 2012 when after a three month lock-out by Talley’s of its workers, iwi interests threatened to withhold stock supplies until an agreement with Maori workers was reached, broke the stalemate, and forced Talley’s back to the negotiating table in principle if not in good faith intent.

But last weekend, this essential troika that gave Maori / working class interests power against the Talley bosses, was undermined by arguably unmandated and illegitimate agreement reached between shed president/secretaries, Tuku Morgan and Ken Mair, and Peter Talley, which saw this week’s well planned and supported strike, and rally at Parliament, called off. The disappointment, disbelief and dismay among workers, unionists and supporters, was palpable. What had been given up, and why?

The common interests of Maori and workers were fractured. The union was undermined, by an agreement that pulled the legs from the common call to stand together and strike. The shed bosses, the ‘iwi representatives’ and Talley’s agreed to a two month negotiating period, as long as the strike was called off, all legal cases were dropped, and the Meat Workers’ Union was dismissed from negotiations. Despite the illegality of this proposal, and lack of vote –and even meetings- from many union members on some of these sites, Talley’s managed to exercise their vicious divide and rule tactics and drive a wedge between the overlapping interests of class and race. The unrepresentative representatives of the workers were conned into believing the wiley old Talley leopard had changed its spots and was finally ready to negotiate in good faith. All this has done is undermine the union, give extra confidence to Talley’s, (another round to Talleys in the long fight), given Talley’s a bit of breathing and production time while they pursue employment law changes as a bigger agenda.

The Government’s support for greedy mistreatment of workers saw Peter Talley receive a knighthood for services to industry and philanthropy earlier this year. Clearly the state condones, and even repackages as benevolence, anti-worker, anti-safety, punitive and exploitative employment conditions.

But all is not lost in the battle between meat workers and the hard-nosed capitalists, Talley’s. The tenuous agreement for further negotiation excluding the Meat Workers’ Union may yet unravel. Dissent about the decisions made by Morgan, Mair et al, may yet lead to a revised position. The facts of the matter haven’t changed – and Talley’s continues to use night shift and other sanctions to punish resistance. It’s an opportunity for the Meat Workers’ Union to regroup, and to consolidate its position and its power. A class based alliance would see iwi as again key to this bulwark against Talley’s exploitation of workers and Maori.

In the meantime, the market is king, and the way those of us who aren’t meat workers, can support those who are, is by using the market to punish Talley’s, and to undermine their market share. As consumers we have a role in resisting oppression of those who have a vital role in putting the food on our table. Mike Treen advises a boycott of Talley’s products, and John Minto discusses economic sabotage in the form of damaging Talley’s goods; other non-economic options include targeting the Talley family in their Nelson mansions as was done in 2012, taking the fight to the source of the oppression in their opulent towers. As members of other unions, we also need to stand side by side with our brothers and sisters in the meat industry. No one is without power, and we all need to lend our power, whatever its form, in support of those who are obviously exploited by the food barons of this land.

Disclaimer Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

The news of plummeting dairy prices should have left no one surprised. A period of extended positive returns encouraged the conversion of pine forests and sheep and cattle runs into dairy farms complete with big budget irrigation schemes, large new barns, new tractors and utes, often funded by debt or banking on high returns in the future. According to Dairy NZ, the average dairy farm has invested $850,000 into capital development in the recent boom. Farms and herds have gotten bigger and dairy production has multiplied. While questions about whether dairy has peaked resurface over time, the law of supply and demand should have indicated that oversupply and weakening demand would lead to an end of the boom.
Recent record milk production levels have been met with record low prices, and in the face of ‘severely overestimated’ expected returns, stockpiled supplies, and increasing international supply, there are concerns again about the lack of depth in the New Zealand economy. Despite a billion dollars worth of expected capital development in dairy processing capacity across the country, little of it is value added, predominantly for the production of dry milk powder. Dairy export returns provided an estimated $14.3 billion to provincial economies in 2014, an 40% increase on the previous year, but there are fears for the wellbeing of indebted farmers, already subject to the vagaries of the weather, and now at the mercy of the markets, they themselves have flooded.
We’ve got about 6.6 million dairy cows in New Zealand, but this year it’s estimated a million will be killed, ‘surplus to requirements’, in the first major reduction since herd size growth of over 30% in the last decade. But sadly, these aren’t just economic units of value to be disposed of, they’re living, sentient beings, and it’s a sad reflection on our attitudes that we can so easily expend them when we realise we’ve overshot the market.
Isn’t that just the Kiwi way though? Our tendency to run with the boom and invest in the latest ‘next best thing’ has set us up historically for bust. Whether it was whales or seals, gold, timber, mutton, kiwifruit, or even the speculative housing market, we’ve got a tendency to fad economics, a bandwagon investment pattern that can never be sustainable long term, especially fuelled by debt.
The concentration of the NZ economy into a few predominant sectors made us particularly vulnerable to shocks in history, and so it is today. A small country dependent on a narrow range of raw commodities selling to larger external trading partners. We’ve been here before. But John Key and Bill English reckon it’s all ok and things aren’t too bad off.
To many like Bill English and John Key, no doubt it feels like we are all doing well. We weathered the Global Financial Crisis, credit is still relatively cheap. Those who got into the housing market and secured rental or investment portfolios have seen their values rise. In the bigger cities, urbanisation, house building and rebuilding, and government infrastructure projects have provided stable employment prospects.
But lest we forget, especially in the face of public concern for the hardships of farmers, the two or three tier economy that really exists in New Zealand society. The ‘rock star’ economy has always been one that serves some better than others. In 2011 the top decile earned 8 x the bottom decile. One in five kids live in poverty. The promised ‘trickle down’ of wealth from deregulation has yet to arrive, more than 30 years after the event. Inequality in New Zealand is greater than ever before.
Outside the cities, and in some sections of society, unemployment rates remain high. There are workers on minimum wage doing multiple shifts to cover power and rent. 40,000 people got their power cut off last year because they couldn’t pay the bills. Energy and food costs require a disproportionately high share of weekly income. There are those who can’t find a genuinely affordable house to rent or buy (even if they could get the credit). Economically and politically marginalised workers are subject to abuse by their bosses; unsafe working conditions; precarious employment. Areas such as Northland are more like Timor or Greece according to economist Shamabeel Eaqub, compared with those such as Orakei in waterfront Auckland that resemble the wealth of Switzerland.
So while we contemplate the (global) price of milk, and what it means to the New Zealand economy and hardworking farmers, let’s also remember all the other hard workers in New Zealand, often unseen in night work, manufacturing, labouring, menial low paid jobs without safety or security. While some sectors in the economy are vulnerable because they put all their investment eggs in one basket, some workers can’t even afford the eggs.

In staring down the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank thus far, the Greek government has represented the hopes of the world’s ‘99%’. Greek resistance has symbolised a show of strength and hope to those elsewhere in the world looking for an alternative model on behalf of those marginalised by the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the 1% elite.

The election of the Tsipras-led Syriza government was seen as a victory for the Left at large. Those of us who aspire to a fairer economic model and a world where the power of trans-national politico-economic institutions have countervailing force at national level, found hope in the Greek government.

In taking the European creditor’s austerity proposals to a referendum, we saw a government speak up for sovereignty, for national interests, and for a distinctive socio-economic and political way of life, and we wish ours did too. In the ‘brinkmanship’ of the referendum on austerity, we saw a government that was prepared to consult its people on a significant issue which could affect that way of life. It was a government prepared to stand against the money lenders. A government prepared to not just bow down and enslave its people to more taxes, worse working conditions, and longer hours of work further into old age to pay off ill-advised debts they barely benefited from. We saw a government that inherited a manufactured debt crisis, but refused to accept the old line that ‘there is no alternative’ to austerity to solve it.

But in standing up to the European troika, Greece showed us a glimmer of hope that there might be an alternative to the current model of neo-liberal capitalism too. Economist Thomas Piketty and others wrote an open letter to Angela Merkel calling for a more humane rethink of the austerity recipe proposed for Greece. Writing in The Guardian, Jennifer Hinton said the economic future for Greece doesn’t need to just depend on the dichotomous alternatives of austerity or stimulus. There are other models that should be supported – retaining the assets of the Greek common wealth, supporting credit unions, measuring not just GDP, but happiness as a measure of success and prosperity. Before becoming Greek’s Finance Minister, as economics professor, Yanis Varoufakis himself said there must be alternatives to the current ‘indefensible European socio-economic system’ that offer the prospect of salvation.

We hoped Greece could stare its creditors in the face and call their bluff. A default on loans would offer a clean slate for Greece, a reclamation of sovereignty, of self-determination. The opportunity to forge a new path with nationalized institutions. (Though of the means to meeting immediate liquidity needs and facilitating the exchange of goods and services, less was certain). A Eurozone apocalypse was to be the Left’s political opportunity.
But in latest developments, hope of a prolonged resistance to austerity are eroding. Leaked details are emerging of a Greek back down, with suggestions the Tsipras-led Syriza Party is prepared to concede tax changes, less, and delayed pensions, and privatization, in exchange for a three year loan extension.

That’s the reality Governments have to face. Capitalism is too big to fail. The powers that be will do all they can to save their sick child. They can alienate and cripple a country economically, they can undermine its leaders, they can starve its people then offer humanitarian aid to make a point – capitalism is THE way of distributing goods and services, and for struggling countries around the world, it’s austerity or bust (where bust ultimately means more austerity). The continued resistance of the Greek government to its creditors threatened to undermine the European Community, its economy, and the hegemony of its doctrine. That instability and disobedience must be contained.

The Greek government was between a rock and a hard place – concessions to creditors in exchange for a bail-out, or an uncertain and probably short-lived and unstable political future. Given what this critical juncture signaled for not just Greeks, but for an alternative economic agenda, we might have hoped for a better fight.

The recently announced unprecedented level of CEO salaries should give all conscientious Kiwis cause for concern. The scale of both the base salaries and the increases for New Zealand company bosses shows real inequity, and growing inequality between the pay rates of workers and elites. The growing gap between the rich and the poor is glaringly obvious there. Over the last 10 years CEO salaries have gone up an average of 107%. In the last year alone CEO pay rates rose an average of 10%. At the same time many lower level Kiwi workers received no pay rise at all or had pay rates that were virtually stagnant, with about only a 3% wage increase for Kiwi workers on average.

On the other hand, the CEO of the ANZ bank earned $4.27 million, up $250,000 from the year before. That’s about 120 times the earnings of the bank’s lowest paid employees. The Westpac boss earned $2.89 million last year. Fonterra’s boss had a colossal pay packet of $4.27 million, an increase of $660,000 on the year before. His pay rise alone is worth the earnings of more than a dozen workers on the median wage.

The head of pharmaceutical company Ebos, earned $3.48 million, Sky City, $3.24 million. And if you’re in charge of a power company you’re also sitting pretty – in 2014 Mighty River Power’s boss earned $3.18 million, a rise of 68% on the previous year. Meridian Energy’s CEO earned $1.86 million – a pay rise of 70%. The Contact Energy chief took home $1.58 million, Genesis $1.30 million, TrustPower $1.36 and Vector $1.51.

Within that list there are no women, which should make us question the impartiality, fairness and decency of the system in itself. But what those pay rates and rises reflect is something widely insidious. It reflects a culture that normalises income extremes, justifies excessive remuneration, and celebrates private accumulation of wealth at the expense of a fair society and the public good. This is especially concerning when most of these companies are monopolistic and provide critical financial or infrastructural services on which vulnerable citizens depend.
Those blind to the biases of the meritocracy that concentrates such wealth and reward in the hands of male CEOs might argue that the pay rates and rises earned are warranted, due to the record profits achieved by the companies concerned. But while those CEO salaries rose an average of 107%, their companies’ profits rose a comparatively modest 59%.

To be sure, the newly (part) privatised power companies have exhibited some exceptional returns. Meridian earned Net Profit After Tax of $117.1 million in the six months to December 2014 and is expected to return $625 million to shareholders over the next five years. Mighty River Power had an End of Year profit to June 2014 of $212 million. Contact Energy recorded a half yearly profit of $257 million, up 17%. These sky high, (usually) record breaking profits are certainly reflected in the high rates of CEO pay. But electricity sector analysts warn about taking simple profit statements at face value – lack of transparency means we are unable to determine how well power companies are actually being run, and the rapid rate of revenue gain and extraction, compared with expenditure raises questions whether assets are even being properly managed and maintained.

While the CEOs of all those power companies were taking home more money than an individual could ever need, more and more New Zealanders are living in power poverty, unable to heat their homes, suffering subsequent health effects. In 2013 more than 40,000 homes had their power cut off due to inability to pay.

In fact people on lower incomes face a double whammy compared with high earning elites. Low income earners already work long hours for poor pay. New Zealand employees on average work the longest hours in the OECD, with 20% of the workforce working more than 50 hours a week, most of them low to middle income earners. At the same time, electricity prices have risen by 46% in real terms since the turn of the century. Power price increases outstrip inflation and push up the cost of living. And because low income earners pay a relatively higher proportion of earnings into energy costs, they’re hit harder than those who earn more.

Those high CEO salaries and dividends to shareholders may not directly come at the cost of social dividends such as warm homes or healthy kids, or for the most vulnerable users being able to afford the security of continuous power supplies. But excessive payments to CEOs while kids die in poorly heated houses are contemptuous of both customers and citizens, and in a supposed egalitarian society that values the welfare of all its members, immoral in the extreme. In a decent society this obvious inequality should be unconscionable to us all.

Disclaimer Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

Earlier this month the Government signed off on the revised Animal Welfare Act with an amendment that saw the law catch up with what many of us already know. Passed into law was a recognition that non-human animals are sentient beings – that they experience emotions and feelings, happiness and joy, and pain and distress.

It’s a reflection on our society and our naturally anthropocentric legal system that it’s taken so long to get this basic recognition into law. But given the way people treat each other, especially those who are different from the prevailing ethnic or cultural norm, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at our long term failure to treat other animals as the beings they are rather than as things.

If we are sometimes incapable of showing empathy or compassion to other humans, it’s not surprising that we can still mistreat, neglect and abuse non-human animals as well. Not that most of us would starve hundreds of cows as a farmer did near Greymouth, nor commit bestiality on a variety of live and dead animals as recently found in the Manukau District Court. But the ongoing operation of rodeos; the killing for ‘sport’ of large “game” fish; and agricultural and industrial farming practices, even the meat trade itself, (especially if you accept that ‘meat is murder’), all treat animals like inanimate objects, incapable of pain or fear, or sorrow and grief. On a daily basis we humans conveniently assume a superiority and dominance that disregards the sentience, and emotional and moral lives of animals other than ourselves. The irony is that in practice we’re also selective about which animals we respect the sentience in. We would condemn a person that treats a (pet) cat the same way we routinely treat horses in racing or other animals in zoos, entertainment or experiments.

Despite the fact that we live in close association with a number of ‘domesticated’ animals, in relationships that can be significant and long lasting, we don’t generally extend the same compassion, tolerance or regard to those who live in paddocks or intensive farms. But the thought and sight of people killing and eating dogs in Asia, is not so different from the eating of cows or pigs in New Zealand, except for the cultural lens through which we view it. While pork is offensive to Muslims, and Indians wouldn’t eat a cow, Kiwis couldn’t eat a dog, and vegetarians and vegans could eat none of them at all.

Convenience and carefully constructed ignorance help us to live with the paradox and contradictions about our relationships and consumption of animals. The way food is packaged, labelled and marketed, helps us ignore the fact that meat ever was a living, feeling, sentient being. And most consumers would rather not know the origins, lives, transportation, killing and rendering of a chicken or lamb that’s on the plate before them at dinner time. These days, most of us couldn’t slaughter an animal for food, and we prefer not to think about the animal that was the subject of a life, that’s later on our plate. We’d rather not know because the reality is almost too bleak to stomach.

But the government is complicit in mistreatment of animals. In weak provisions in the Animal Welfare Act and related codes, in low penalties for animal abuse, for lax laws on animal experimentation despite some recent changes, the state condones violence against animals all the while recently recognising the sentience of animals in law.

In fact, admitting to the sentience of all animals requires us to apply equal recognition whether they be our cat or dog or the meat on our plate. Compassion might require us to do the same. Now that we’ve finally recognised the sentience of animals, in law, we will need to respect this in practice. That will require better attention to current inhumane practices in sport and recreation, industry and farming, through government and the courts, and in society at large.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/05/30/animal-welfare-act-changes-demand-step-up-from-government-and-society/feed/7Housing economy played like a monopoly game but too important to be left to chancehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/04/18/housing-economy-played-like-a-monopoly-game-but-too-important-to-be-left-to-chance/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/04/18/housing-economy-played-like-a-monopoly-game-but-too-important-to-be-left-to-chance/#commentsFri, 17 Apr 2015 21:19:52 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=58067

The housing crisis is the issue of the moment but is at risk of being appropriated by a multitude of interests, many of them vested, each who frame the debate – and the solutions, in their own ways.

There are at least two important elements – a housing affordability problem, and a housing availability problem. It’s now almost an unreachable ‘kiwi dream’ to own your own home, especially in Auckland, but these days many kiwis also struggle to find one to live in. Property prices are out of control, property wealth is accumulating in the hands of the few, there’s a housing shortage, overcrowding, homelessness.

Developers and land interests would have us believe both housing affordability and availability would be solved by freeing up land supply. But a recent report, ‘Long Term Vacant Residentially Owned Land in Auckland’, commissioned by the Auckland Council, found about 8000 vacant, residentially zoned sites already available for development within Auckland’s urban limits. They found ‘significant development opportunity for new housing on plan-enabled residentially zoned land within Auckland’s built up area’, including new parcels, free-standing vacant land, and newly subdivided sites not yet built on. The study found the main reason owners of vacant, residentially zoned sites weren’t developing their land, was because the benefits of holding on for later speculative profits outweighed financial and building risks and development costs.

The potential for housing development on readily available land doesn’t seem get to the attention it deserves, with a “strong bias toward greenfield development on the urban fringe” according to the report. That bias in favour of greenfields development has been accelerated for the long term with the removal of the Auckland Regional Council and the Metropolitan Urban Limit, and in the short term through the fast tracked Special Housing Area sites, brought in through the Housing Accord between the Council and the Government. There’s actually a lot of residential land currently available, and lots also being built on – if you haven’t noticed Kumeu, Riverhead, Westgate, Hobsonville, Silverdale, Pokeno, Karaka, Long Bay, Orewa and more. The Unitary Plan indicates relentless more capacity though infrastructure servicing is not so well provided.

But a sudden rush of land supply hasn’t helped speed up additional housing availability, with few houses developed in the SHAs so far. Given the limited capacity of the building industry, and existing trade shortages, only so many houses can be built in so much time. And even in a setting of unlimited land supply, owners will still stage the release of property for sale to retain a premium and not flood the market.

Housing availability through land supply doesn’t necessarily lead to housing affordability either. About 1000 new houses are currently being built in my hometown of Kumeu, with another 2,500 expedited through local SHAs. But still, large houses on small sites are on the market for around $900,000. The word around town is that both offshore and domestic investors are buying many of them for rental and capital gains.

The Reserve Bank refers to the ‘tax preferred status of housing, especially investor-related housing”, driving speculation, and prices up. The potential for tax free capital gains provides a pretty strong incentive for those with equity to buy and sell property in any context. If you’re lucky enough to already own property in Auckland, or somehow have enough equity, you can make money quick by getting on the property ladder and becoming a landlord and speculator. That drives the prices up for everyone else and further locks low income earners out of the market.

TV programmes like ‘The Block’, and ‘Our First Home’ celebrate quick and dirty property speculation and the resulting capital gains, trading houses like they’re disposable commodities. In ‘Our First Home’, the winning speculators “pocketed $194,000 profit” over the course of the 10 week competition.
The Auckland housing economy in particular is like a game of monopoly, where winners and losers are clearly defined and sitting at opposite sides of the table. -Fortunes are not decided by virtue or hard work, but by access to property ownership and the ongoing financial leverage it provides in a predominantly housing economy. But housing is a human right, it shouldn’t be left to chance, -or the free market.

Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator in a contract role to the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

The recent successful campaigns to save trees such as the Western Springs Pohutukawa, and the Titirangi Kauri, are victories for the trees and for activists. These victories show that the public don’t want trees treated like objects to be arbitrarily disposed of by developers or utility providers, and that we’ll do what we can to save them. Civic activism is alive and well and so are these trees.

But almost every week Auckland’s Tree Council makes submissions against the removal of significant trees. And this isn’t just an Auckland issue, in Taranaki the ‘Save the Waitara Riverside Pohutukawa’ campaign seeks retention of 23 significant trees which Taranaki District Council wants to remove to build a seawall. A surfer elsewhere in Taranaki saw a significant copse of cabbage trees being removed and saved them from destruction by negotiating with the power company concerned, successfully empowered by the threat of public action.

The proposed removal of significant trees in these public cases is the tip of the iceberg in terms of pressures our trees face. With Auckland’s huge growth, and the housing shortage used as a justification for all sorts of ill-planned developments, trees are often seen as obstacles to progress and first in line to go. Most resource consent applications to remove trees are granted non-notified, and the trees are chopped down before anyone even knows about it. Neighbours find out when the chainsaw starts screaming. The massive Western Ring Route motorway project has already removed much of the corridor’s vegetative character – old macrocarpas, mangroves, heritage character trees from the Unitec precinct…. Tree trimming for power lines clearance also leaves many trees butchered.

But in public at least, there’s a renewed focus on the value of trees and the collective loss if they’re gone. And what makes this resurgence of tree awareness extra exciting, is the creative, democratic methods used for campaigning. Local public action, protestors climbing and occupying trees, yarnbombing, decorating the trees with art, banners, showing love and a sense of community, fun and tree ‘sit-ins’ have all added a new dynamic to complement attending meetings and running petitions!

These recent successful tree campaigns have made great use of social media, online petitions and collective discussion platforms such as Loomio; participation has been open and almost without boundaries. It’s always encouraging to have some successes too. We can take heart from that. The creative use of media and creative spontaneity and support from the public, won the day.

Trees are an essential element of a ‘liveable city’ for people and other species. Trees are valuable intrinsically, but also for their contribution to culture and botany, place, character and habitat, as well as for the environmental services they provide (carbon sequestration, stormwater and erosion control).

Suddenly, last week, trees gained political value too. Politicians from the left and the right avowed their commitment to trees. But because the loss of general tree protection rules was a fully intended consequence of RMA changes in the National term of government, further reforms don’t bode well. The best time to try to protect trees in Auckland under the current regime was through the Unitary Plan and that train has already left the station.

There’s renewed impetus to find a way to protect our trees amidst an economic paradigm that privileges private property rights and denies the importance of public amenity. We shouldn’t have to sit in trees or wave placards to retain our living heritage. Development should respect and value trees. Councils should recognise their value to the public.
Tree removal erodes environmental quality and public amenity, but is also anti-democratic, so successful campaigns are a victory for the trees, but also for activists. The contingent, magical art of campaigning saved our precious trees. Let’s hope we can replicate that success, for more trees, and wider causes, against threats to come.

Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator by the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/03/21/successful-campaigns-bring-victory-for-activists-and-the-trees/feed/3It’s time to get across the Auckland Harbour Bridge by foot and by bikehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/03/07/its-time-to-get-across-the-auckland-harbour-bridge-by-foot-and-by-bike/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/03/07/its-time-to-get-across-the-auckland-harbour-bridge-by-foot-and-by-bike/#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 18:23:59 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=56241

Sometime next month, an independent panel of commissioners will get to decide on SkyPath, the planned shared walking and cycle path under the eastern clip-on of the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

SkyPath is a project of massive public significance. Despite early harbour bridge designs that had walking and cycling provided along with traffic lanes, Aucklanders have been denied walking and cycling between the city and North Shore for almost 55 years. But the opportunity can’t be denied any longer.

A record number of about 12,000 people submitted on SkyPath resource consent application, and of those there were less than 200 in opposition. The SkyPath landing points are the most contentious elements of the proposal, partly because of traffic concerns at the portal ends of the bridge. But SkyPath itself is relatively uncontroversial. It just makes sense to be able to walk and ride the short distance across the harbour. It makes more sense all the time, with the improved pathway connections at either end. The new Waterfront promenade and the planned North Shore SeaPath to Takapuna both support SkyPath in allowing a seamless journey across the bridge to and from further afield and will alleviate traffic pressures at the portals too. SkyPath is already doing for walking and cycling, what Britomart did for rail. Now we just need to be able to ‘get across’. SkyPath is the missing link.

The ‘Get Across’ movement has been going for over 10 years, led by the indomitable Bevan Woodward, a man with a mission, advocating for and representing walking, cycling, better connections and a better, fairer city. Knocked back at every turn, sometimes it seemed like Aucklanders would be relegated to crossing the small gap over the harbour by motor vehicle for ever.

The forerunner to NZTA (Transit) refused to sacrifice access to the bridge deck for walkers and cyclists. Refusing to give up, the SkyPath development team adapted the design into a pathway below the bridge decking, an architectural and access wonder, away from the noise and fumes but allowing great views of the beautiful harbour.

Sometimes the proposal was just completely denied. But ‘NZTA’s’ blunt refusal to allow access led, in 2009, the bridge’s 50th birthday, to one of Auckland’s most audacious acts of civil disobedience when 5000 of us ‘stormed’ the harbour bridge, to make our own way across. In doing so, we proved we were serious, and that the gradient wasn’t too steep for walkers and cyclists, including a whole carnival of protestors; politicians, parents, pets, (yes, pets!!), people in costumes, on bicycles, unicycles and stilts. That day will go down in history as a symbol of Aucklanders taking back their city by foot and by bike.

Every possible government and local government funding source was investigated in the struggle to realise the dream of a pathway across the bridge. Tentative commitment by the former local councils never provided certainty in the face of multi-million dollar costs. Even now, despite government funds for both the national cycle trails and the urban cycleway projects, it’s been left to volunteers to find private investment funders to deliver SkyPath.

The project has met the highest test of all – that of the market, and been found satisfactory. Repeated independent assessments have shown there’s a high real demand that makes the project worthwhile. It stacks up in the benefit-cost calculations to the extent that private investors (the Public Infrastructure Partnership, or “PIP” Fund), have bought into it. It will be one of the first Public-Private Partnerships in NZ transport, and the first for walking and cycling. Other agencies and parties have a strong role to play in either underwriting or supporting the project, and the bridge itself remains an NZTA asset.

SkyPath delivers on many transport, social, environmental, community and aesthetic objectives, and will be an asset to Aucklanders (and beyond) for generations to come. It’s long overdue. There’s plenty of ‘water to flow under the bridge’ yet, with the resource consent hearing, detailed design and other processes to be completed. But the foundations have been laid. The bridge is already there, so is the vision, the need and the funding. We’ve got a world class design and public support. It’s time to get across the Auckland Harbour Bridge, by foot and by bike.

Christine is the Chair of the SkyPath Trust Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator in a contract role to the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/03/07/its-time-to-get-across-the-auckland-harbour-bridge-by-foot-and-by-bike/feed/2We just became less safe at home and abroadhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/28/we-just-became-less-safe-at-home-and-abroad/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/28/we-just-became-less-safe-at-home-and-abroad/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 21:18:48 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=56239

In a globalised world, sovereignty seems like a mirage. Our governments arbitrarily enter us into wars and free trade arrangements without consultation, and even most domestic ‘democratic’ action borders on farce. Our borders are wide open to the pillages of foreign investment, buying our homes, farms, factories and shops. The trappings of national identity like the silver fern and the (usually sporting) icons so important to our identity are shallow when you look at what’s being traded away – sovereign independence, freedom from surveillance, self-determined and indigenous domestic and foreign policy.

Not satisfied with winning the cold war and bringing about an ‘end of ideology’, the capitalist juggernaut sought to find new enemies, new markets, new ways of exploiting people and the planet. The old enemy of communism has been replaced by the new enemy of ‘radical Islam’, defined by rhetoric and racist stereotypes. These predictably create a target that give life to Samuel Huntington’s thesis about the ‘clash of civilisations’ as the ‘inevitable’ post-cold war basis for conflict. It keeps the war machine rolling and the oil wells springing. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to suffer in conditions that are worse after the US’s ‘Operation Iraqi Liberation’ and “Operation New Dawn’ than they were under Saddam Hussein.

We could perhaps more easily accept New Zealand’s role in overseas military interventions if the call to ‘humanitarian action’ was applied equally across the world. The selective righteous invocation of human rights, freedom and democracy rings hollow when we turn a blind eye to atrocities being carried out by the friends of America, but rush to punish their enemies. The latest American bogeyman becomes a household name and metaphorical bells ring out in the media whenever a leading insurgent is killed by drone strike or bomb. But I never heard our Prime Minister mourn the loss of Palestinian children, or condemn the conditions they continue to subsist through. I haven’t heard any disgust expressed at the exercise of Saudi capital punishment, or West Papuan genocide. His performance in defence of a killed Jordanian pilot and beheaded Iraqi prisoners rang like a badly acted pantomime put on to appease his American audience.

For what it’s worth, many of us reject and resent the fact of John Key sending our soldiers to war in Iraq. Invasion has never ended well, or improved stability in the Middle East. If it had, we wouldn’t be going back there. Clearly for Iraq and Iraqi’s, the war with America did not end. It’s naïve to hope that those fighting on the ground, for their own sovereignty and Islamic state (whether we like it or not), might distinguish us from the ‘really bad guys’, the Americans, and go easy on us as a target, as the loss of our service men and women in Afghanistan showed. We’re just another part of an illicit invading force.

Suddenly things got less safe for Kiwis, at home and around the world. As the symbols of capitalism and the west become more of a target to radicals, as expressed by the threats to Westfield shopping centres, John Key just took us another step down the path of state sanctioned violence both home and abroad.

Disclaimer Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator in a contract role to the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/28/we-just-became-less-safe-at-home-and-abroad/feed/1Beware of the ‘American Sniper’ approach to foreign policyhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/14/beware-of-the-american-sniper-approach-to-foreign-policy/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/14/beware-of-the-american-sniper-approach-to-foreign-policy/#commentsSat, 14 Feb 2015 00:05:51 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=55832
At Waitangi celebrating New Zealand’s ‘National day’, Prime Minister John Key made an impromptu case for sending ‘training’ forces to Iraq, citing the defence of human rights. In some ways he was right, none of us should ‘turn away’ from human rights abuses; whether they be in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, West Papua, Manus Island or Palestine. But the foreign policy of western nations, including New Zealand, seems more informed by ‘American Sniper’ than by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sending troops to Iraq, for whatever purpose, unsanctioned by the United Nations, can only lead to trouble.

While Chris Kyle, (the ‘American Sniper’) may have been more the product of his culture than the driver of it, we should be wary of foreign policy based on simplistic, one-sided, arbitrary/political imperatives. When the ‘enemy’ is poorly defined as ‘Islam’, despite the differences within the religion, or ‘terrorism’, a term used to fit any number of settings in any number of countries including groups aspiring to statehood; when extrajudicial measures are used by world powers to enforce their will in far flung countries, peace can never be found. Let’s not ignore the call for human rights and dignity, but we shouldn’t at the same time justify or ignore other genocidal acts in the Middle East or elsewhere.

The American Sniper was motivated by ‘God, Country, and family’ a ‘higher moral cause’ that was vague enough to (self) justify the reported killing of more than 150 ‘suspects’ in their own land. But even the sniper had a closer view of his targets than those sitting behind consoles and computer screens directing drone strikes upon wedding parties, nomadic herders, and possibly, occasionally militants.

Recourse to simplistic symbols and straw men to justify invasion, long distance killing, in foreign lands by western forces is what caused the latest instability in the Middle East after all. -Civilisation and culture destroyed, a kind of peace – ruined, huge financial cost, women and children unnecessary victims. The case against the ‘axis of evil’ and non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction and the resulting destabilisation of countries across the region should make us wary of more rhetorical justification for killing swarthy, bearded bogeymen.

Will more western-state sanctioned violence solve the problem of Middle Eastern anarchy when we disposed of the leaders who held those states together in the past? Will destroying ISIS make the region a safer place anyway – and if so, for whom or what? Does ‘doing our bit’ in the ‘war against terror’ necessarily mean we should re-enter the fray? If sending troops for whatever function (training?), is the cost of being in the ‘club’, and makes New Zealand complicit in an already ill-advised intervention, with the result that we’re more likely to be on the ‘terrorist’ radar both at home and abroad, shouldn’t we question that cost?

The modern ‘theatre of war’ is made for TV and social media. That somewhat explains the recourse to symbolism, rhetoric and hyperbole, where the images are increasingly sensationalised and over the top. Snuff movies as agitprop, aid workers and journalists as pawns (but no-one’s paying to set them free), staged beheadings captured on cellphones and broadcast via You Tube. Propaganda is a game that many can play. No wonder American Sniper is doing so well in the movie theatres. When this sort of art and artifice imitates life, truth is also a victim. We should question war as entertainment and as distraction from real agendas. It’s no substitute for robust long-game foreign policy or recognition of the universality of human rights. Otherwise it’s all just rhetoric.

DisclaimerChristine Rose is employed as ‘Kauri dieback community co-ordinator’ in a contract role to the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

Maui and Hector’s dolphins are a small inshore coastal dolphin species found only in New Zealand. Their population has reduced from an estimated 30,000 Hector’s and 1800 Maui dolphins in the 1970s, to about 7000 Hector’s distributed in groups around the South Island, and about 55 North Island Maui, today.

Last week a decomposed adult female Hector’s Dolphin, and calf, were found killed in a recreational set-net near Nelson. Despite the fact that Maui and Hector’s dolphins are threatened with extinction, only parts of their habitat are protected, and in Nelson’s Tasman Bay, an important area for the survival of the species, they have no protection at all.

Earlier this year a Hector’s dolphin was also caught in a recreational set net at Raukokore in the Bay of Plenty, on the East Coast of the North Island, an area where this rarest of dolphins also lives, exposed to daunting pressures from trawl and set nets and other threats.

Maui and Hector’s dolphins live in coastal waters out to about 100m deep, in small subpopulations. Maui dolphins have become infamous, here and around the world, because their numbers are so low, and because of the Government’s failure to act sufficiently to save the species. Indeed internationally, New Zealand is condemned for its resistance to meaningful and comprehensive protection for the species across its range.

But despite claims from the Government that the Hector’s dolphin population is healthier than previously thought, Hector’s are all under threat and in decline. The healthiest Hector’s dolphin population, on the South Island’s West Coast has the least protection, with set netting and trawling allowed in most of its range. As a result, Hector’s dolphins continue to die avoidable deaths as bycatch, drowning in fishing gear banned in many countries around the world.

There’s an irony that Mexico has just banned set nets and bought out affected fishers to save their rare harbour dolphin, the Vaquita, but New Zealand is failing its own endemic, small, rare and lovely species. It’s no coincidence that Maui and Hector’s dolphins are among the rarest on the planet. But we’re being shown up by Mexico in the conservation stakes.

In order for Maui and Hector’s dolphins to survive as a species, all sub-populations need protecting throughout their full habitat, from the full range of human caused threats. Instead, the New Zealand Government is complacent and apathetic. They’ve delayed the review of the Hector’s Dolphins Threat Management Plan. They’ve done as little as possible while being seen to do something for Maui dolphins. Trawling still occurs in most of their habitat, and targets to improve trawl monitoring in 25% increments over four years have not been met. The Government has introduced new threats such as seismic testing (in the Marine Mammal Sanctuary no less), with the dolphins facing the busiest seismic season ever.

The Government added a small amount of protection for Maui’s dolphins in 2013, but Maui’s and Hector’s dolphins are still dying avoidably, around New Zealand. They’re the world’s rarest marine dolphins already, they should be safe. The answer is simple, ban set and trawl nets out to 100m deep, and save the dolphins. Anything else is negligent of a most beautiful dolphin, causing extinction by Government apathy.

Note: Christine Rose is employed as Kauri DieBack Community Co-ordinator in a contract role to the Auckland Council. All opinions expressed herein are Christine’s own. No opinion or views expressed in this blog or any other media, shall be construed as the opinion of the Council or any other organisation.

The installation of domestic solar energy systems has dramatically increased over the last few years, as the price of photovoltaic cells drops and power prices rise. The rate of installation is growing at about 30-40% per annum. About 50 new solar connections are made every month. Meridian’s solar customers have risen from 50, to 2500 in the last three years – and that includes me.

Encouraged by the ideals of improved self-sufficiency, resilience and energy efficiency, many New Zealanders like us are adding solar panels to new and old homes. Despite the initial capital cost, when complemented with other energy conservation measures, solar panels offer a return on investment of up to 15%. But the rapid rise in solar installations has prompted an adverse reaction from the power companies previously offering the best solar buy-back rates. Both Meridian and Contact, have in recent months reduced their feed-in tariff rates and therefore potentially affected the pay-back time and viability of solar for many.

Meridian’s rate for current connections offers 25c/kWh per day for the first 5KW, and 10c/kWh after that. For new customers the rate will be 7c/kWh in summer and 10c/kWh in winter, a significant change. They expect new, lower rates to apply to existing customers like me, in the New Year. Contact’s rates have gone down from 17c/kWh to only 8c/kWh. They say they don’t want to ‘subsidise solar ahead of other renewables’, even though they offer a far lower rate for solar feed-in than they charge the same customer for power used at night or at a later time. They also buy solar at a low rate and then sell the surplus power to the next customer at a higher charge.
The Sustainable Energy Chairman Brendan Winitana says the reduction of the feed-in tariff by the power companies shows they see solar as a competitor to their own generation sources, and want to cut costs (feed-in buy back rates) and maximise profits (by maintaining high supply charges). Meridian says they need to remain competitive, “the other power companies have dropped their rates”. They say they’re “following the market”. Incidentally this company, now almost half owned by private investors, posted over $220million profit last year.

Overseas, some countries have government controlled feed-in tariffs to incentivise solar installations. In New Zealand those rates are solely decided by the power companies. That leads to uncertainty, potential volatility, and threatens the viability of rooftop solar energy generation.
However, some solar advocates say the reduced feed-in tariffs will do little to dent the rising investment in solar panels. As power prices continue to rise and photovoltaic cell prices reduce, discerning investors will continue to seek the energy security, efficiency and resilience that solar panels offer.

It’s expected that some people will invest in bigger systems to offset increasing power bills. Battery storage is becoming cheaper all the time, so as buy-back rates from power companies reduce, the value of investing in batteries improves. People may also reduce their energy consumption rather than pay more to buy-back electricity. Worse deals from power companies will also encourage people to get smarter with their use of the energy they generate – the self-consumption model, where the incentive is to use more of the energy you create when you create it because it’s more efficient than storing it or feeding it into the grid only to have to buy it back later at a higher price.
The ‘race to the lowest price’ competition between the power companies seems unlikely to disincentivise solar generation too much, given the range of reasons people invest in it. But it will discourage grid-feed behaviour.

There are many good reasons power companies should be supporting localised solar generators. Solar panels offer power companies extra energy creation when their main sources are depleted. For Meridian for example, solar offers additional capacity when lake levels are low. Solar generation on the periphery also helps reliability and efficiency in areas at the end of the network where it costs more to supply energy than power companies can charge for it. Distributed solar energy production also helps offset transmission loss.

Power companies take home millions of dollars in profits, pay their CEOs huge salaries and disconnect the homes of tens of thousands of families unable to pay their bills. Equity and fairness for solar generators is likely to be low on their list of priorities.

Car is King in Auckland, city of cars. It’s been that way since the 1950s, but the massive construction zone that is the current North Western Motorway expansion, confirms Auckland’s urban form as dominated by the car, tarseal, concrete and steel.

The $2 billion Western Ring Route cuts a swathe through schools, communities, urban forest remnants, open space, and a marine reserve, and is a clear indication of priorities, but will leave negative impacts for generations. Fast tracking this motorway building by classing the Western Ring Route a ‘Road of National Significance’, reinforces Auckland’s car culture, diverts massive funds from other projects, and creates megalithic flyovers dwarfing all human scale.

85% of Auckland’s journeys are by car. About 85% of those journeys are to work, and 90% of those are single occupancy vehicles. We have one of the highest car ownership rates per capita, in the world. Auckland’s car fleet grows by an additional 15,000 cars per annum. Our urban form is laid out for car driving – and obviously so is our public investment.
Past, hard won public transport improvements, such as rail redevelopment and the Northern Busway, are even less likely to be repeated with a government that’s hostile to alternative funding sources and public transport per se. But the structural arrangements behind Auckland’s existing public transport services are also problematic (competitive, and relatively deregulated) and do little to improve the confidence of Aucklanders in alternatives to the car.

The mad, bad car dependency also looks to be entrenched with the fast tracking of ‘Special Housing Areas’ (SHAs) which leave no time and give no care, to integrating land use and transport to avoid more of the car based sprawl that has shaped Auckland so far.

My hometown of Kumeu, 35 km from the city centre has a motorway extension to within 4kms of its strip-development heart. We’ve got a motorway almost to our community’s door. Of course almost as soon as it was completed, it’s been congested and blocked with induced traffic. But the alternative bus service winds through slow suburban streets for most journeys to town. For anyone that’s not a committed public transport user, these bus services will never compare with even the slowest journey by car.

The SHAs propose an additional 2,500 houses for Kumeu, and several thousand residential sites are already under construction in the area. Auckland Council plans for an eventual extra 80,000 houses and 200,000 more people to live in the current Western greenfield periphery of Auckland.

But the $2.5billion already invested in the Northwestern motorway corridor excludes a dedicated, congestion-free public transport busway. The concession to bus passenger travel amidst this concrete jungle, is a bus shoulder lane for 4 kms of the journey by 2017, and another 4 or so kms by 2021. Current consultation on the local bus service review indicates no sign of dedicated busway for generations.

In the meantime, the existing, dedicated, congestion-free rail corridor, stations and line, right in the heart of this development area and the SHAs, lie idle. The railway station at Huapai/Kumeu sits empty. Auckland Transport is about to withdraw services from Waitakere to Swanson. We must be the only communities in the region facing a worsening public transport service rather than an improvement.

Officials, and others, suggest that our area should just wait for the Northwestern busway. Pragmatism tells us local PT users, and residents, that it’s better to use the existing resource invested in rail that’s available now.

Politics is at the heart of transport investment decisions. The politics of Auckland transport shows a disregard for PT, for current and future PT users, a lusty love affair with the car and bad planning.

We’re not getting a dedicated bus corridor amidst the country’s biggest roading project on the Northwestern motorway. There is no plan for rail services where the line and stations currently exist. That’s not a matter of ability, but a matter of political will. It looks like hell to me.

At the recent G20 in Brisbane, member countries agreed to accelerate growth to an additional 2% on top of current trajectories. But ongoing public sector cuts, asset sales, and reducing workers’ rights indicate that at least part of the growth model is at the expense of the workforce, public investment and the environment.

Economic growth is the unquestioned solution to unemployment, deficits and even world hunger. It wins elections for politicians. It helps us pay off our debts and gives young people jobs. So how come we’re all even more indebted, the gap between the rich and poor has widened, and living standards for many have declined?

There’s a saying that infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Anything that just keeps growing will ultimately suck its host dry. Unlimited growth and a finite planet can’t coexist. We’re already seeing the limits to growth with depletion of resources and intolerable pollution of sinks. Despite the hallowed status of the growth objective, it’s not benign or benevolent in its effects. Growth doesn’t necessarily lead to a more equitable society or an equal distribution of benefits for all. There are many problems with “growth” per se, that lie beneath the surface.

For a start, there’s a democratic problem with the G20 pursuit of a +2% growth target – the nation state becomes more beholden to international peers and the global capital system than to its domestic electorate – as we see with the TPPA.
To support the growth model we have to consume more. That’s economically unsustainable since growth plans don’t include higher wages or the creation of quality jobs. But it’s also environmentally unsustainable to dig up limited resources to ‘stimulate the economy’. Growth depends on creating markets for stuff we don’t necessarily need, with resources we can’t sustainably expend, using money we don’t have. Emerging markets are expected to ‘buy into’ the growth dream – as producers and consumers. That effects domestic policies, cultures, ecologies, economic conditions – and usually not for the better.

Some of the G20 members made concessions to helping developing countries tackle climate change at the Brisbane meeting. But a fossil fuel based, growth economy is actually incompatible with addressing climate change, or any other sort of pollution or planetary degradation. The way economic expansion is shackled to energy use, more growth can only exacerbate environmental damage. Short term growth targets prevent governments and industry from thinking long term in the interests of a more sustainable model or more sustainable investments and manufacturing.

And of course more growth won’t automatically lead to a more equitable society just in itself, as we’ve seen from recent history. If the spoils of growth concentrate in the hands of the few, societies become more unequal, not less. A rising economic tide won’t just automatically raise all ships to the same extent. More growth doesn’t equate to more public good. After all, there is already enough food, wealth and resources to satisfy world hunger – it’s how its controlled and distributed that causes poverty and starvation. And even for the wealthy, more money doesn’t just lead to more happiness or wellbeing.

The challenge is to find a compelling alternative ideology that offers the apparent benefits of growth, without the unsustainable economic, social and environmental costs. But we won’t find that from any contemporary western state where the interests of growth and capital are incorrectly seen as intrinsically linked the interests of all.

In the last few weeks the news has been full of dead whales. We’ve had a pod of Pilot whales stranded in the Bay of Plenty. Before that two Cuvier’s Beaked whales, possibly mother and baby, were washed up at Maketu. A juvenile Humpback whale was washed up at Waikanae Beach. We’ve had dead rarities like Spectacled porpoises in separate incidents in Otago; a dead sperm whale and another rotten baleen whale, and today a Dwarf Sperm Whale, all washed up on the West Coast of Northland. Since February we’ve had at least 8 Orca deaths in two incidents, and other Pilot whales around the New Zealand coast. That’s a pretty grim tally and it’s not even counting cases where cause of death is known such as with the Bryde’s whale dead from ship strike, and countless smaller dolphins found dead or killed throughout the year.

Putting aside the propensity for Pilot Whales to strand in any circumstances, and the fact that we’re hearing about more live whales as well, the spate of unexplained whale deaths is leaving conservationists concerned. The head of Project Jonah now says we’ve got the highest rates of whale stranding in the world.

There’s speculation about the cause of death of all these much loved majestic animals, and pathology analysis usually fails to provide clear answers. Even when samples from dead animals are retrieved, refrigerating them damages evidence, impacts are hard to determine. Questions remain unanswered.

Explanations proposed by the concerned public include the obvious bogeyman of seismic testing – given that most of the country’s EEZ has now been opened up for oil, gas and mineral prospecting. Because many of the whales washed up dead are in poor condition, other theories include death from starvation caused by overfishing or ingesting plastic. Ship strike is sometimes suspected even if there’s not clear evidence. Sometimes the evidence is impossible to find, because of the state of decay in the animal concerned, or just the challenges performing a necropsy on a twenty tonne animal.

The Department of Conservation makes pathology reports available on their website, but they don’t tell us much. What we can know, is that there are massive pressures on our marine mammals. New Zealand has 34 of the World’s 76 cetaceans, but we know more about dead Cuvier’s Beaked whales than we do about the living.

Whale and dolphin tourism is directly worth about $120 million to the New Zealand economy. As inhabitants of Oceania ourselves, we Kiwis love the sea and love our marine mammals. We all have a stake, and collectively mourn the strandings of whales. A more pitiful and poignant sight cannot be found. Picture the images of everyday New Zealanders trying to refloat stranded whales as a reflection of our collective care.

Basically we don’t really know what’s up with the whales, but with the increase in stressors such as ocean noise, ship activity, pollution and heavy metals (NZ cetaceans have the highest concentrations of Persistent Organochlorine Contaminants in the world) life can’t be easy for them. Add overfishing and seismic testing and we have a real suite of potential threats.

Whales and dolphins have survived in the world’s waters for millions of years. But we already reduced some species to just hundreds of individuals. With the end of (most) whaling, they’ve had a chance to recover. 50% of the world’s species have been wiped out within the last 40 years. What hope is there for the whales amidst the perils of the Anthropocene?

The Prime Minister is a puppet. Not just our current Prime Minister, but given the forces of multinational globalisation, the role of any head of state, is less as independent actor, and more as a puppet of international trends and imperatives.
The fate of New Zealand’s economy, potential military roles, security, and indeed its narratives are more determined by the rise and fall of international tides, than from domestic action. We all know economically that if ‘America sneezes, the world catches a cold’. The strength of the New Zealand dollar is relative to international trade and demand. The threat of capital flight out of New Zealand constricts domestic regulation, tax and policy settings. The value of our export commodities is determined by production elsewhere. Cultural and consumer preferences come ready made from larger neo-colonial producers. In the age of Western neo-liberal consensus, our economic and foreign policy settings come in a package from paternalistic overlords. The hegemony is complete because of the ‘There Is No Alternative’ dogma that has come with the ‘end of ideology’, with the west ‘winning’ the cold-war contest of ideas between capitalism and communism.

The victory of free market capitalism is so complete that our political spectrum is fundamentally more oriented to the ‘right’ than to the left. –Not that you’d think so from the rhetoric about Labour & Green policy in the lead up to the election (“loony left”, “radical”). Our voting choices are constrained by what’s considered electorally feasible – a mediocre middle way at best. State intervention in ameliorating the impacts of modern capitalism is seen as outdated and inappropriate, yet it’s hardly radical socialism.

We’re complicit in this as consumers as well as citizens. Our consumption patterns determine the shape of the world we live in – rainforests are destroyed and orang-utans made extinct because we eat palm oil. The seas are being depleted because we love to hunt and eat fish. Pigs are raised in cruel conditions because we love bacon. There’s a market for junk and other stuff because we all buy into it.

But is there an alternative? Is there hope for an economic model that meets our wants and needs that doesn’t result in environmental destruction, inequality, dehumanisation and loss of sovereignty? Is it still possible for political non-alignment and sovereign independence in a world increasingly dominated by a narrative that ‘you’re either with us (in the war against whatever the latest bogeyman is, or for American supremacy), or against us’?

Philosophers and economists continue to search for a compelling and cohesive alternative ideology that will deliver all the gratification for consumers that capitalism does, but without the costs. But there’s nothing much on the horizon that looks like it will challenge the current world order. Even China has hitched its fortunes to the capitalist mode of production and exchange.

The opportunities for independent foreign and economic policy are limited given our historical links to Britain and the United States and our immersion in global trade. Ultimately, we’ll only be free from the TPPA if international agreements fail, not because of the unlikely event that our Government rejects it. The International Court of Justice and World Trade organisation will increasingly be the jurisdictions deciding domestic policy.

We were unable to change the government, and even if we could have, this issue would still remain. All Western governments are shackled to the prevailing conventions and expectations of a market economy. Independent state action is even more difficult than during the Cold War, when the non-aligned movement and small states were able to take principled positions and to ‘punch above their weight’.

Many of us seek independence in our private lives, carrying out small acts of resistance – growing our own veges, turning off the tv, dropping out of the formal economy, using the black market or gift economy for trade while knowing we’re still rats in a cage. Despite the odds, resistance is fertile. We must continue to seek opportunities for freedom in our own lives. It may be the only real freedom we have left.

National’s pre-election promises saw some wins for the environment – perhaps as the party sought to appease its “Blue-Green” voters and broaden its popular appeal. Some of the ecological gains were a long time in the making, overdue even– such as the series of marine reserves on the South Island’s West Coast, and the ban on shark finning. And to be fair, both these initiatives don’t go as far as they should. The Devil’s always in the detail – and the Marine Reserves, though worthy, are too small and separated to protect habitats, and the shark fin policy exempts some sharks, and contains a bizarre ‘fins reattached’ clause which allows the killing of low value shark for their fins anyway, as long as said fins are reattached to any shark afterwards.

But most irrational in the environmental policy suite elicited from National before the election, was actually the omission of a critical issue. The issue of Maui (formerly Maui’s) and Hector’s dolphins. Here we have the world’s smallest and loveliest marine dolphin. Found nowhere else in the world. Iconic in their representation of everything that’s fragile and precious about the marine environment. Subjects of huge public appeal, and easily seen from the shore, often present with swimmers and surfers, even off Auckland’s West Coast beaches. They’re also the centre of significant international attention, with the International Whaling Commission, the International Society of Marine Mammalogy and international and national NGOs unanimous in their call for better protection.

Is it conflict of interest that prevents the National Government doing what’s required, even in election year, to save these dolphins? Peter Goodfellow, the National Party President is a major shareholder in Sanfords, and a Director of the SeaFood Industry Council, after all.

Whatever the motivation, the Government certainly has a persistent message for those who express their concerns about the dolphins and the Government’s lack of action. The “Blue-Greenwash” narrative goes “We’re doing everything we can. We’ve protected the dolphins. Everywhere they go they are safe thanks to us.…”

In fact, the Minister of Conservation Nick Smith, discounted 48 verified dolphin sightings when he decided on the limits of the most recent ‘protection’ measures. The promised 25% increments of observers on trawl vessels have been delayed. Boat based surveys budgeted for last summer were not implemented. Dangerous seismic testing for oil and gas, and mineral extraction, loom throughout the dolphin habitat. The Government reintroduced ring-netting into the Manukau Harbour – dolphin habitat.

The confirmed entrapment of a Maui or Hector’s dolphin in a recreational set net on the Bay of Plenty side of East Cape earlier this year proves the range of these dolphins is way further than is currently protected, meaning the risk of entrapment is even more significant.

If the Government was serious about dolphin conservation they would see past their own spin, listen to Department of Conservation scientists (who say up to eight Maui dolphins could be killed in any year from trawl nets for example, but that the population can’t sustain any), respond to global pressures, and get the nets out of the dolphin habitat – around much of New Zealand’s coastline and out to 100m deep.

Some of the world’s civilized countries have banned set nets. Protecting our oceans, fish stocks and most charismatic of dolphins is in our environmental, economic and social best interests. In failing to protect the most vulnerable and lovely dolphins, in addition to their other faults, this Government shows they also fail to meet the test of ‘civilized’.

Perception is everything in politics. And one of the many successful tactics used by National in the election, was to perpetuate the perception that they were more credible and sensible than the Opposition. That perception won the day for middle New Zealand voters.

Casual voters could take comfort in the perception of the National Party as ‘a steady set of hands offering stability’. This was in contrast with the ‘loopy Greens’ and Kim DotCom being the tail that wags the dog – Labour, itself portrayed as weak with divided leadership.

The National party represented ‘a growing economy’, offering ‘jobs, prosperity and tax cuts’ as opposed to punitive ‘tax and spend’ intervention from Labour. National offered leadership against threats to law and order both domestically and internationally –and so what if it requires mass surveillance, ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear’.
National successfully appropriated popular environmental and social concerns and adapted them to suit their own purposes. So before the election we had policy promises that seemed to end shark finning, protect popular recreational fisheries from trawling; that created new marine reserves, and fenced off farm waterways.

Where necessary, there was also lip service to social concerns such as housing affordability and inequality. Even though the National party policies in these areas were less than convincing and failed to deal with the real issues upon deeper analysis, they cultivated the perception, that National was the catch all, moderate, responsible party that would address the wider range of issues affecting New Zealand and New Zealanders.

Voters, using the National narrative to frame their perceptions could easily look at a divided left and see parties that were fighting among – and in some cases, within themselves. These were parties that sought to represent workers, but wanted to put up the retirement age. Admittedly, both Labour and the Greens moved closer to the centre in many ways, but if you could have all the policies you wanted and have a ‘stable government’ led by the ‘likeable, nice Mr Key’, why would you look elsewhere?

Abetted by media clearly hostile to impartiality and to a change of Government, the Opposition hardly stood a chance. The fact is, the Opposition parties were batting against history when they contested the 2014 election. Since the 1950s no two term Government has failed to be re-elected for a third term. The odds were always against a change.
John Key’s ‘steady-as-she goes’, casual leadership style, where crisis leaves him unruffled, almost untouchable, is well supported by Steven Joyce, Bill English and Gerry Brownlee. In terms of their ruthless intelligence and slick perception management, the National Party are formidable

At least until the left can create an equal perception of competency and strong unified leadership, across the parties represented, National will continue to prevail and to be preferred by the majority of voters in the middle.

The dedication, loyalty, and tribalism of party politics means that sometimes the left lets itself down by not voting strategically. We all want our favoured party to get maximum votes, naturally, but the winner-takes-all approach doesn’t always suit multi-party left wing politics against a hegemonic and undivided right. Part of National’s strategic advantage is that it is a relatively undivided dominant bloc, whereas the left is a house divided and competing against itself. This is even though we share the same interests.
No party on the left has a monopoly on good policy – and we share overlapping values. And we all know we have to vote out National to save our country. The centre-to-left parties of Labour, the Greens and Internet/Mana all want to address poverty, inequality, to protect the environment and workers’ rights, and a transition to a cleaner economy. We’re concerned about surveillance, sovereignty and the future. Yet because many of us have such loyalty to our particular parties, we sometimes cast constituency votes that lead to a right, rather than left wing victory, in our particular seat and the country. We saw that last election, in Ohariu-Belmont when a split Labour-Greens vote saw the re-election of Peter Dunne; in Waitakere, when Carmel Sepuloni was beaten by 9 votes by Paula Bennett, and when Nicky Wagner defeated Brendon Burns by 47 in Christchurch East.
As we saw with the Epsom ‘cup of tea’ deal in 2011, National and parties on the right have no qualms with brokering deals to gain strategic advantage, but we haven’t quite mastered it on the left, despite our more communitarian views. Last election some suggested that the Greens should have focused on the party vote and left winnable seats to Labour instead of splitting the vote and letting National candidates slip through. There’s a strong case for negotiation and agreement when high ranking list MPs will get in anyway. We’re all better off if seats that are unwinnable by Green candidates are conceded to Labour who then win more constituency seats that would otherwise go to National.
This election has again shown the Left’s difficulty in the fine art of strategic political compromise. We can still stay loyal by advocating party votes for our preferred choice. But in marginal seats where the main contest is between National and Labour, it makes sense for even dedicated Green Party voters to give Labour candidates their support.
It gets even more difficult for the parties to concede votes in other areas. In Te Tai Tokerau where some polls show a tight race between Kelvin Davis for Labour, and Hone Harawira for Mana, the election of Hone could make the difference for the whole party and lead to the election of three or four new MPs of real integrity, therefore improving the chances of a left wing government for the benefit of the country. If Hone doesn’t win TTT, all the Internet/Mana votes could be wasted. A victory for Kelvin in Te Tai Tokerau, might lead to a loss for the left as a whole. It’s not just TTT that’s at stake, it’s the whole future of a left wing Government.
Which party you support determines what you think it means to vote strategically. But in close seats, sometimes the votes for other, sympathetic party’s candidates are the wisest votes of all.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/09/18/left-has-to-vote-strategically-this-election/feed/7Public interest at risk more than business interests this electionhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/09/11/public-interest-at-risk-more-than-business-interests-this-election/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/09/11/public-interest-at-risk-more-than-business-interests-this-election/#commentsWed, 10 Sep 2014 18:44:46 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=52185

This election is not just about which political party wins. It’s about the privilege of multinational corporates, including the all-powerful media. It’s about access to minerals and resources needed to prop up the prevailing economic order and to stave off a transition to a more sustainable and resilient one. It’s about access to our own and international fisheries – and their survival. It’s about whether workers are treated humanely or like wage slaves. It’s about the future of the welfare state. It’s about sovereignty, and it’s about the hope of our nation for generations to come.

The stakes are very high – not just for you and me, but for our children, and their children; for our environment, and, for the world. If a National led Government are re-elected on September 20th, the opportunity and promise of our country will be sullied that much more. It will be a sad reflection on how many New Zealanders have been conned by the facile and devious propaganda of a corrupt government and their spin doctors in the mainstream and social media.

Because the stakes are so high, the media, as tentacles of the multinational octopus that is modern capitalism, has been all out to paint the opposition as lacking in credibility, as poor economic managers, loony, impractical… They’ve waged a concerted and relentless campaign, not just in this election year, but in every year, to project Labour as weak, dishonest and clumsy. Nicky Hager proves that much of that was a beat up. Ironically the mainstream media attitude towards the Greens alternates between a ‘funny money, far left’ mantra, to support of certain policies – perhaps because the Greens are less of a threat in terms of leading a Government. As also indicated in ‘Dirty Politics’ there’s been a systematic attempt to discredit Kim DotCom, and Internet/Mana. This week’s headlines about a rift between the two parties over cannabis policy promotion is a case in point. Healthy disagreement (even when expressed in Hone’s forthright terms) is no bad thing between two separate parties seeking an alliance. We should be concerned when there’s not that tussle of priorities, but according to the media it’s a fatal flaw.

Ironically of course, election of a Labour-led Government isn’t that much of a threat to the prevailing economic order at all. There’s more at stake for our country from a National led Government, than there is for business from a Labour-led one. All the scaremongering about the ‘far left’ is hot air. There remains only a marginal ‘left’ in most Western democracies. No-one in New Zealand is proposing forced nationalisation of assets or industries, more industrial socialism or democracy, collective ownership of property – the things that might really reduce economic and social inequality. Labour and the Greens certainly aren’t suggesting any radical economic, or environmental steps that would seriously threaten the power of capital and its accumulation in the hands of the few.

But what National propose, is a further consolidation of power among the already very wealthy, increased national and personal debt, social problems that will persist for generations, and environmental damage beyond repair. To make matters worse, it also represents a surrender of foreign policy in favour of American interests in far flung corners of the world where we should retain a principled and independent stand.

To ensure a future New Zealand worth living in, we individually must make that principled stand ourselves, in this election.

One element of the National Party’s success, is the story they tell about New Zealand.
On Planet Key, there is no poverty, there’s high employment, law and order is improving, crime rates are down. Teachers are happy and satisfied in their work. Charter schools are a great investment. Children are all well fed unless their parents are drug addled beneficiaries who should be punished. The private sector can deliver everything better than the state can. Unfettered international trade is good for New Zealand. We’re doing fine economically because we export plenty of milk and timber. Extended paid parental leave is unnecessary and unaffordable. National are doing really well at protecting the environment. They love Maui’s dolphins. Better workers’ rights and pay rates will lose us jobs. We didn’t need to own those power companies – Mum and Dad investors bought them. The Christchurch rebuild is doing well under Gerry Brownlee. Judith Collins isn’t dodgy. Neither was John Banks.
To the discerning observer the National Party storyline runs like a Tui ad. So why does it convince so many New Zealanders? Partly it’s because most people want to be reassured that everything’s ok. In the comfort of their homes after a day’s work they don’t want to know about destruction of the planet or about social injustices. They don’t want to pay more tax so the ‘beneficiary down the road’ ‘can sit at home all day’. They want a simple life, easy answers and to rest assured that the Government is steady and stable and will keep out of their lives. The National party delivers with its simplistic take on issues, John Key’s personal ‘comfort’ with anything slightly suspicious (nothing to see here, move right along) and their denial of poverty or looming economic problems.
The National narrative also convinces both party loyalists and the average voter because of the way it’s delivered. John Key has had some pretty good coaching somewhere along the line with his adopted super-relaxed approach to all affairs of the state. Whether he’s dining with Prince William, leading a media conference, giving a speech or talking to a school group, he’s a study in casualness. Hands in pockets, moderate in tone, he’s everyman, not the Prime Minister. With the ‘rags to riches’ “I grew up in a state home” story, his image is carefully constructed so the man on the street is going to identify with, and vote for him. He’s not an intellectual, he’s your mate, just a lot richer than you are, and if he can do it, then you can too, and no government should stand in the way of your pursuit of that wealth.
Another reason the National Party narrative is so compelling is that the whole party repeat it. It’s as if you say something often enough, it will come to be true. At the same time, the party has a strong countervailing narrative against other political parties – mistruths are repeated about Labour’s track record in office, the debt they (didn’t) incur, the supposed extremism of the Greens, the overstated threat to stability if they both get to Govern.
But saying something often enough doesn’t make it true. Poverty and inequality are growing, personal debt is a major issue. Our economy and our environment are fragile. The challenge for all of us this election is to expose the myths, challenge the narrative, and sell our own vision of what New Zealand could achieve with a change in Government. We need it.

Commentators seem surprised at the popularity of the Mana/Internet phenomenon. The ultimate ‘odd coupling’ is doing reasonably well in the polls at over 2% support, and Right Wing pundits are guessing that the Party might even reach 5% by the time of the election campaign proper. Right Wing scaremongers inevitably have their own interests in downplaying the strength of Labour and overstating the power of the furthest on the left, but Kim DotCom’s entry to the political contest certainly makes things lively, and with Mana, offers those seeking a left wing voice a viable alternative. Among undecided or floating voters within my peer groups, Internet/Mana comes up as a likely vote catcher, again and again.
It seems that whether you’re from the alienated left or uninspired middle ground, Internet/Mana offer a bit of everything. You’ve got a radical, renegade Maori MP who has subverted the political system while apparently not being subverted by it. A politician unafraid to call it as he sees it, who’s critical of the system, is refreshing enough, given politics’ tendency to co-opt and diminish the revolutionary zeal of even its most ardent participants. Usually too quickly, earnest new politicians become cogs in the wheel (either in the Party machine or the Parliamentary one). Hone rather, reshapes the wheel in his own fashion. In ‘Campbell Live’s ‘Meet the Leaders’ show, Hone and wife Hilda were without pretension, they were committed, and showed personal integrity in an unsanitised way not usually evident in the slick world of televised politics. They were human, humane, earnest and honest.
But there’s more: in Internet/Mana you’ve also got a large German multi-millionaire internet tycoon with a serious (and understandable) grievance with the Government. He’s a figurehead for internet freedom and for standing up against the homogenising power that is Hollywood. Both Hone and Kim DotCom represent an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian position that appeals to many with an ‘occupy’ or ‘anonymous’ identification paradoxically seeking expression in formal politics.
The Internet Party’s appointment of Laila Harre, like Labour’s appointment of Matt McCarten could have been either an act of genius for the Party or disaster for the old Alliance comrades. (You get a sense it’s working better for Laila than it is for Matt at the moment). In Laila we have an advocate for workers and those in the margins of formal society, who embodies integrity and social conscience.
Internet/Mana have also scored a coup with their policy. They’ve out flanked current voices on the left, and adopted enough good policies to win over disenfranchised Green voters. They collectively say no to fracking, no to new seabed mining and drilling, no to GE, and yes to clean energy….
Internet/Mana have cunningly carved out a niche for themselves on the left which was otherwise unoccupied ground. The big question will be, however, if enough other willing suitors on the more centrist left get enough votes to give these policies a place in a new Government.

I was a kid on pig farms in the 1970s. Piglets were castrated using a scalpel without anaesthetic, wire cutters were used to trim their teeth and cut off their tails. Wire was forced through their sensitive snouts. Row upon row of sows were trapped in barred cages confining them to a single position, unable to turn around and separated from their piglets. The air was full of dust, no sunlight penetrated. The pigpens were sluiced with cold water, the floors were barren. These highly intelligent animals were imprisoned as breeding and meat machines, never seeing the light of day.

If the shocking revelations disclosed by FarmWatch are anything to go by, at least some of those derelict, Dickensian pig farms have got even worse.

Concerns about pig welfare go back to at least the 1960s, but the Ministry for Primary Industries, its precursors and the Pork Industry Board justify the systematic ill treatment of pigs ‘because it’s more productive’, ‘leads to less piglet mortality’, or because of ‘the long lead in time for modifications to piggeries’.

In nature, pigs live in stable social units, seek sheltered nesting spaces, feed and root in the soil, and use their snouts and mouths to explore the environment. In nature, sows remove themselves from the herd a few days before birth, create a nest from straw and leaves, and stay with their piglets separate from the herd for a week to 10 days, weaning the piglets only after four or five months.

In New Zealand some pig farms have more than 1000 pigs. Piglets are weaned after only about 28 days, after which sows are impregnated again. Sows can’t turn around, they can’t nest, and they can’t wallow in mud, or root in the soil. Even under the current Code of Welfare for Pigs, unsedated castration, teeth and tail clipping are permitted for young piglets.
Farming is inherently cruel and treats animals like commodities or things. Minimum welfare standards are inadequate, and enforcement lax. Unacceptable abuse obviously occurs. We have only 11 compliance officers for 100 million farm animals, meaning much goes on unseen.

Opposition parties are now vowing to outlaw ‘Factory farming’ by 2017. There are concerns about what that means – a redefinition of terms but little change? or nothing, if National get back in.

Evidence shows that people are willing to pay more for welfare friendly meat, (though this varies across consumer groups) though ideally, for the animals and the environment, we wouldn’t eat it at all. After the expose by FarmWatch, consumer backlash has increased – note the commitment to a pork boycott by consumers, or to eat only ‘Freedom Farmed’ pork. But the light shining on current farm practices undermines public confidence in certification schemes given that at least one of the farms was certified under the ‘CarePig’ label. In fact, they couldn’t have cared less for the pigs.

There’s no substitute for monitored regulation of industry to ensure humane standards are met, but in the meantime discerning consumers will increasingly reject pork. Farmers who legally and illegally mistreat pigs are an enemy of the ‘pork’ industry as well as of pigs.

We’ve almost come to expect the Government’s dismissal of good science, ever since our Prime Minister denied the evidence presented by Dr Mike Joy about the state of our rivers, on BBC’s Hard Talk TV programme. The Government denies all sorts of evidence that damns their performance in other indicators too – like poverty.

But the Government’s latest triumph of ideology over science came last week. When the Green Party publicised the decision by Simon Bridges as Minister of Energy and resources, to allow oil and gas extraction in the Maui’s Dolphin Marine Mammal Sanctuary, both Nick Smith and Simon Bridges contradicted world experts and disputed scientific evidence in the interests of spin.

The North Island’s Maui’s Dolphins are the rarest marine dolphin in the world. From about 2000 in the 1970s, only about 55 adults now remain. They’re dispersed along the West Coast in small groups between Northland and Taranaki. They can sometimes be seen from West Coast beaches where they occasionally swim with surfers. But they also come into West Coast harbours, and out to at least 6nm from shore. Currently their greatest threat is gill nets, as trawling is allowed to 2nm from shore. That leaves a huge area unprotected, and there are virtually no observers on boats to assess the damage. The dolphins face the additional threats of seismic testing, boat strike, pollution, prey depletion (from oil and gas extraction) and toxoplasmosis.

Scientists agree Maui’s dolphins can’t sustain a single human induced death in 10-23 years if they are to survive. The International Society of Marine Mammology last year called on the Government to protect the Maui’s’ entire habitat. The International Whaling Commission for the third year running, did the same. Jane Goodall has further discredited the Government’s latest moves.

Yet Simon Bridges and this Government have not only failed to protect the dolphins throughout their range, but they have introduced oil and gas mining permits into their Marine Mammal Sanctuary and allowed ring netting back into the Manukau Harbour.

Nick Smith in Parliament said no dolphins are found in the part of the Marine Mammal Sanctuary opened for drilling, and said ‘Show me the Maui”. He didn’t look at DoC’s own website, which shows 10 Maui’s sightings in the area. Fortunately the Greens have exposed this mistruth. (Labour’s position is unfathomable).

In yesterday’s question time John Key said world experts calling for better protection was ‘mumbo jumbo’. Nick Smith dismissed the 80,000 submissions in favour of saving the dolphins, last year. They do admit that set nets are the dolphins’ greatest threat but have failed to remove them from Maui’s’ habitat.
The Government piles threat upon threat onto these lovely wee dolphins. They pretend Maui’s advocates want to close down existing oil wells. No one has suggested that, but as we’ve seen, neither science, nor reason, mean much to this Party in their pursuit of oil dollars.

As a polarising figure with a ‘rags to riches’ story, John Banks has certainly made his mark on New Zealand history. Even without his conviction for ‘knowingly filing a false electoral return’, John Banks has courted controversy and been deliberately offensive to many sectors of society.
He’s an enigma – how could a racist, homophobic, anti-abortion ranter, paradoxically befriend stray cats and defend the rights of animals against experimentation? A man so seemingly hostile to other people, but compassionate to other species.
He’s a man of a significantly forceful personality – some would say a bully- who has used his position of power for 34 years to foment division, dissent, and a conservative moral agenda. Meanwhile his support for neo-liberal economic policy found an expedient latter-day home in the flailing ACT party at the last election. His dodgy stunt to stitch up a pre-election deal with John Key over a very public cup of tea, and usurpation of the leadership of the ACT party gave this marginal party a pivotal role in propping up the National Government’s flimsiest of majorities.
As a one-man band representing ACT in Parliament, he had a nominal policy manifesto to guide him – though obviously his overarching role was to support National when it came to the vote in Parliament. How many more years might we have had to contend with his politics of hate had not the persistence of Graham McCready and others borne fruit.
The New Zealand public are right to question the initial refusal of the police to pursue his electoral dishonesty. Especially since the police apparently had no such qualms about blustering into Kim Dotcom’s mansion with guns abreast on behalf of American movie moguls (Some of whom were also supported by the National Government with hefty subsidies). Some might say Banks’ failure to declare the source of his electoral donations (ie he lied), was a misdemeanor that didn’t warrant a police prosecution. But the same standard wasn’t applied to Bradley Ambrose’s taping of Banks’ and Key’s tea pot conversation. And it’s those double standards which unfortunately undermine the perceived independence of the police.
John Key continues to stand by Banks as a ‘trustworthy and honest’ man. The courts have found otherwise. How humiliating it must be for the once-proud (too proud?) Banks to have the word of his once friend, now enemy, Dotcom accepted over his own.
Some commentators say that this ‘fall from grace’ for committing a minor ‘technical crime’, is an ‘unfortunate end to a long and illustrious political career’, and that he deserves compassion. Others might say that to fall from grace, one must first have had some – which in this case is arguable, and because of his past treatment of minorities, which so obviously lacked the compassion he extends to unwanted cats, he deserves all he gets and more.
Now that he’s signaled his resignation, may the whole sorry chapter come to an end. We are well to afford ourselves the grace and compassion to wish him good bye.

A sense of national identity is forged through our response to historical challenges. What it is to be a ‘Kiwi’ has been developed through colonisation and wars (we’re ANZACs), through leadership in the face of emerging and destructive technology – nuclear arms, (we’re nuclear free and proud of it), and through the domestic contests we’ve won about apartheid, homosexual law reform, abortion and women’s rights.
Many of us on the left of the political spectrum stand proud for the fact that women won the vote here, first; that we sent the navy to the Pacific to oppose nuclear testing; that we stood up to America against nuclear ships; we showed solidarity against apartheid and that we implemented many laws giving equal rights and freedoms to others regardless of their gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. We’ve been proud to be clean and green – or at least aspiring to be. We’ve been proud of our egalitarian society and incremental progressive political development. We had a noble, principled foreign policy stance that saw us as peacekeepers; independent and not caught up in other peoples’ wars. We stood up to other nations against whaling in the Southern Oceans.

Unfortunately, our sense of national pride and righteousness is becoming quickly sullied. What sort of country have we become?

‘Our New Zealand’ is now a nation where the gap between the rich and the poor has grown faster than ever before in any other place and at any other time. Economic inequality overwhelms any equality before the law. High rates of suicide graphically demonstrate the despair and hopelessness in our society. Our environmental standing is grim with what we’re doing to freshwater, wetlands, high country habitats. Extinctions march onward with only token Governmental response. Christchurch is bulldozed under residents’ feet. Homelessness affects thousands. Any sort of home ownership, much less the quarter acre Pavlova paradise, is now out of the reach of so many while a privileged few own more than one house. Access to tertiary education and upward advancement through studying as an adult has been reduced. Private indebtedness means we’re owned by foreign banks. Corporatised and privatised infrastructure is operated for commercial gain not as a public service – no wonder over 40,000 people had their power cut off last year. Our fragile sovereignty has been traded off through World Trade Organisation negotiations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Our nation which once stood righteous on foreign policy, now sucks up to and actively participates in America’s spy networks, drone strikes and imperialistic invasions.

These days, those of us on the left are desperate for a change in government if not in political-economic order. Our sovereign integrity is a myth. John Key’s ‘comfort’ with the erosion of our moral statehood is embarrassing and scary. This is not the New Zealand we had, nor the New Zealand we aspire to.

Who defines the problem, gets to define the solution, and so it has come to pass that Special Housing Areas are the ‘solution’ to the ‘Housing Crisis’ as defined by Government and handed to Auckland Council through the ‘Housing Accord’ to enact.
The stated purpose of Special Housing Areas was to “free up land supply”, and “address Auckland’s housing affordability”. With the creation of 63 Special Housing Areas (SHAs) spread far and wide, the Government and Council aim to enable the speedy consenting of 33,500 new homes.
The factors affecting high house prices are diverse. But the Government picked land use rules as the issue requiring urgent action. Not prepared to address other causes like speculative pressures pushing prices up, with a Capital Gains Tax; or the cost of house construction, by dealing with New Zealand’s building duopoly, the Government, and by extension, the Auckland Council, have departed from due planning processes, ignored infrastructure constraints and removed parties’ rights to a say in matters affecting them. Special Housing Areas are a crude free-market response relying on trickle-down economics and minimal intervention to address Auckland’s complex population and housing situation. The creation of fast-tracked SHAs compounds Auckland’s planning and infrastructure problem, rather than solving it.
To address housing affordability, SHAs improve theoretical availability by flooding the market with new urban zoned land. One wonders about the building industry’s capacity to build that many dwellings so quickly. But land supply addresses just part of the issue. Other costs include economic and environmental, visible and invisible costs. There’s site development, and building costs; the public costs of infrastructure – if provided; and social and environmental costs if not –such as air and water quality effects, loss of amenity and open space, and the long term costs of commuting and congestion.
Public concerns over SHAs include lack of consultation, costs carried by ratepayers, adverse environmental effects, traffic, and infrastructure requirements, and whether there’ll be enough ‘affordable housing’ to justify the projects. From others are concerns about what ‘affordable housing’ will mean for existing communities and current social and land values.
The proposed development areas are not all lacking merit. But many of the new SHA are in places not previously contemplated for high density development. Local Boards are sometimes opposed to the new zones for want of infrastructure. The Government proposes reducing some development contributions meaning either a funding deficit or a service shortfall.
Because consents are to be approved within six months, SHAs short-cut the planning process applied to conventional subdivision, and privilege some developments over others. Other regions of New Zealand are also disadvantaged as special provisions support yet more growth in Auckland at the expense of investment in the provinces.
‘Affordability’ is defined as a house worth between $325,000 and $475,000, probably unaffordable for many first home buyers anyway– especially in the face of the Reserve Bank’s Loan-to-Value lending limits for those with less than 20% deposit for a house.
The Unitary Plan is supposed to provide sufficient capacity for the generations to come. But by expediting ad hoc development in selected areas, the Council and the Government are allowing years of the region’s predicted growth to be guaranteed consent within six months of application. The SHAs clearly pick winners. The losers are existing communities, good urban design, strategic and planned provision of infrastructure, and our environment.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/05/14/free-market-no-solution-to-aucklands-housing-costs/feed/10Drug rules should be based on effects not on bias towards certain productshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/04/30/drug-rules-should-be-based-on-effects-not-on-bias-towards-certain-products/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/04/30/drug-rules-should-be-based-on-effects-not-on-bias-towards-certain-products/#commentsTue, 29 Apr 2014 19:52:11 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=45761

To advocate for sensible drug laws is not to advocate for drug use. But we have to recognise how prevalent drug use is, in our society. Lots of people like to get a hit from drugs. Some of it’s normalised and socially sanctioned no matter what the costs – like alcohol; some if it’s increasingly stigmatised, like tobacco. But the debate over legal synthetic highs shows how hypocritical and unhelpful our current law is when it comes to cannabis.

Our national drug and alcohol policy is problematic – it fails to address either the causes of drug use, addiction and harm (social dislocation, human nature, boredom?), or the consequences (illness, domestic violence, imprisonment, death and other personal and societal costs). Our drug policy is inconsistent – we celebrate alcohol, saturate every social event with it, exalt its barons; and alcohol, among other highs will continue to be legal while others less harmful are banned. Current drug legislation alienates illicit drug users from society and the law, criminalises a prevalent past-time without either stopping its use or treating its health effects, costs the state huge amounts of money, and creates a public contradiction that’s hard to justify.

Health professionals and users both agree that synthetic highs are worse than cannabis in their effects – the hit is stronger and lasts longer, and has a nastier edge. Dependence and withdrawals are adverse effects. But they’ve been legal, so there hasn’t been the risk of criminal and social stigma, nor risk of gang association that comes with access to illegal pot. There’s no workplace testing for synthetic highs, so that has provided an added incentive for recreational drug users to buy a worse product than they otherwise might. As a result, legal high retailers do a roaring trade, and harm from use and withdrawals is being seen in family violence, anxiety, hospitalisation and dependency, even though many of those buying the hitherto legal highs, would prefer to smoke more natural, less harmful dope.

Now that synthetic highs are to be banned, users will revert to procuring either stockpiled or imported black market synthetic highs, or cannabis, thereby shifting drug problems underground. Drug use seems to be part of the human condition, so we should treat problem drug use and addiction, with appropriate sensible judicial and medical treatment.

Unlike synthetic highs you don’t need to test marijuana on animals to prove anything about its safety or otherwise. Cannabis has had thousands of years of testing on willing subjects, and has directly killed none. But that’s not to encourage its use, especially at work, while driving, for young people, around children, in public or for those with mental illness or a fragile psyche. That applies to all other drug based stimulants as well. There should be a common standard of impairment and subsequent regulation of all drugs and alcohol based on effects, not arbitrarily, or based on bias towards certain products.

The ‘Earth’ is 71% water but our oceans are the last frontier. The oceans are huge, relatively unexplored, full of weird and wonderful diversity. In New Zealand we’re never far from the sea, and our identity, our landscapes, our communities, and a large part of our economy, are shaped by the ocean’s influence. We’ve got the world’s fifth largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). We’ve got 34 of the world’s 76 cetaceans. We’re the world’s ‘seabird central’. But we don’t treat our oceans with much respect.
The seas are full of trash. Scientists warn of global fisheries collapse by 2050, warming of the world’s oceans, acidification and contamination. Our coastal margins have lost natural elements like dunes, lagoons and mangroves. Marine mammals including Blue whales, the biggest animals to ever live, are a shadow of previous populations, though it appears our West Coast might be only the fifth Blue Whale foraging ground known in the world. Here in NZ, we have among the ‘world’s best’ market based fishery management, in the Quota Management System, but both target and by-catch species are under pressure. There’s a concentration of quota now that it’s a tradeable commodity, in fewer, bigger companies with larger boats and more intensive effort and impact. Recreational fishing rights are reduced while commercial fishing interests continue without the same restraint. The aim of the Ministry of Primary Industries is to secure ‘fish for the future’, but given the state of our fisheries and the price of fish, it’s hard enough to obtain fish for today.
There are over 16,000 fish marine species in New Zealand waters. 130 are commercially fished by 1,300 commercial vessels, targeting a total allowable catch of almost 586,000 tonnes of fish per annum. The seafood industry employs over 7000 full time equivalents and earns about $1.35billion per annum. But is it really sustainable?
Large parts of the country’s coast are open to oil and mineral exploration and exploitation. 85% of New Zealand’s territorial sea and 68% of our EEZ are open for bottom trawling. Huge weighted nets are dragged along the ocean floor, destroying undersea geology and trapping everything in the way. General catch limits are set close to their ‘maximum sustainable levels”, managing fish to within only 20% of preharvest numbers – allowing catching of up to 80% of estimated commercial fish stocks. A quarter of fish caught are thrown back, and bycatch kills hundreds of seabirds, well beyond their risk threshold, every year. Maui’s & Hector’s dolphins have been depleted from an estimated 30,000 Hector’s and 2000 Maui’s in the 1970s, to 7,000 and 55 now. 376 fur seals were killed as bycatch 2010-11 alone, and in the last 10 years about 700 Sea Lions were killed in nets, mostly in the Auckland Islands. With reduced numbers, natural threats like disease make these species more vulnerable, so it’s not looking good for the future at all.

Join scientists, NGOs and MPs in a discussion on issues facing our oceans at an ‘Election Year Oceans Forum’, April 27 10.30-12.30 Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium, 23 Tamaki Dr, Auckland. All welcome but numbers are limited so please RSVP via mauisandhectorsdolphins@gmail.com or on the Oceans Forum fb event or ‘Eventfinda’.

Dairy farming is a crutch to our economy, but under current conditions, it’s financially and environmentally unsustainable. With the National Party’s links to farming interests, that’s unlikely to change soon.

There’s no doubt about the significance of dairying to our economy, and the role of New Zealand dairy in global markets. Dairy farming contributes $5.6 billion pa to our economy – 2.8% of GDP. That’s 10 x the wine sector, 3 x forestry and logging and 40 x the utilities sector. An estimated 10,000 farm owners employ 35,000 workers. At face value, dairying makes the Government look good because of its contribution to growing the economy. But there’s a dark side to the green hills and docile cows grazing in the paddock.

NZ has one of the world’s lowest dairy cost models because of our lax labour and environmental laws, meaning we’re not paying the full price for our milk. The financial incentive of artificially high returns has encouraged the massive intensification and conversion to dairy farming across the country. It’s a capital intensive process that has led to a tripling of dairy farm debt over the last decade, to a current level of $32 billion. The Reserve Bank warns that high farm debt is a threat to the country’s financial stability.

Big farming is now an industry for investors, where shareholders are at arms’ length from the land, and bank on increasing profits at the cost of clean water and animal welfare. National is the party of farmers and there would be fewer profits for farmers and investors (including National MPs) if environmental and social externalities were addressed!

We all know the environmental footprint of dairying is huge, especially as intensification and conversion increase. More than 283,700 ha of land were converted to dairy farms between 1996-2008, with more since, and more still to come. That’s led to deforestation, sedimentation and habitat loss. We’ve got more than 6 million dairy cows producing 48% of New Zealand’s total Greenhouse Gas Emissions. As herd size has grown, so have pollution loadings.

These days pastoral farming is the ‘overwhelming source of pollution’ in rivers and streams.

Between 1992 and 2002 the number of cows in the Waikato grew 37%, and nitrogen in steams increased 40%. The mean herd size in Canterbury where significant intensification has occurred, is now 710 cows. This has led to a tripling of irrigation and water demand and subsequent calls for subsidised irrigation schemes.

The National Party has always represented the interests of farming. But Amy Adam’s farm ownership in the Central Plains Water supply area, Judith Collins’ links to the dairy industry, Party President Peter Goodfellow’s massive farming interests in the Waikato, and the shareholdings of John Key and other current and ex-MPs in farming investments, show the National Party have more interests in a profitable dairy sector than most. We shouldn’t expect changes to environmental policy soon.

‘Disaster capitalism’, according to author Naomi Klein, is when a shocking event like a war, invasion, or natural disaster provides a political opportunity for privatisation and corporate takeover of state functions.
In Chile after the overthrow of Allende, in Iraq after the American invasion, the US after September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, and Sri Lanka after the tsunami, the combination of social disorientation and the justification of disaster response made ideal conditions for right wing economic reform, usually with a reduction in civil rights.

In Christchurch, communities were already disempowered by the removal of elected representatives on ECan, the Canterbury Regional Council, as the Government sought to further ‘Big Farming’ interests in water allocation. The Global Financial Crisis was already being used to justify austerity measures. Canterbury’s devastating earthquakes then provided an opportunity for a range of sweeping law changes that have opened up the region to disaster capitalism with radical effects on the landscape of Christchurch and peoples’ rights.

Soon after the earthquakes, Prime Minister John Key met with 50 corporation CEOs to devise a plan for rebuilding Christchurch. What emerged included SCRIT – the “Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team” made of CERA, Christchurch City Council, NZ Transport Agency, Fulton Hogan and City Care, and publicly listed giants Fletcher Construction, Downer, and McConnell Dowell. Private companies were bonded into disaster recovery.

The earthquakes gave the government justification for five years of unprecedented legislative override. They gave Bob Parker the 2010 election, and Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority members payment of $1,000 a day. They gave Fletchers a bulk contract to rebuild 50,000 homes worth billions of dollars. Developers across Canterbury gained access to new land to house the displaced, and John Key got the claim that the economy is improving.
The catastrophe gave the people of Christchurch trespass notices and charter schools on the ruins of public education. The NZ Human Rights Commission reports that people got deteriorating living standards beyond the disaster’s initial effects, community dislocation, financial distress, unresolved insurance claims, poor or insecure housing, and undermined rights to property, housing and participation.

The Government passed sweeping laws which allowed them to “obtain information from any source; enter and demolish, remove or build land or structures; ‘require co-operation’ between adjoining landowners; and suspend, amend or revoke plans, policies, resource consents, existing use rights or Certificates of Compliance”; all with few rights to appeal. The sanctity of private property was swept aside.

These laws were condemned by eminent legal academics for their “unlimited extreme powers not proportional to the magnitude of the disaster, inadequate checks and balances, for containing elements contradictory to long standing constitutional and democratic principles, which … set a dangerous precedent and are procedurally unsound”.
True to the definition of disaster capitalism, many Christchurch residents are powerless, homeless, and depressed, while some of the world’s biggest companies rake over the ashes and take home the spoils from taxpayers and the state.

Tax cuts for the rich. A growing deficit. GCSB spying and infiltrating civil society. Denied rights to have a say on activities in the EEZ. Deep sea oil and sea bed mining in precious habitats. Removal of (already limited) environmental protection under the RMA. Destruction of the Department of Conservation. Subsidised irrigation schemes leading to dammed, damned, and polluted rivers. Environmental abuses. Selling out workers’ rights to Warner Brothers and selling off gambling laws to Sky City. No accountability for bosses who oversee deaths of workers, whether it be in forestry, mining, or truck driving. The 90 day fire at will law, and undermining organised labour and the right to strike and join a union. Selling assets generations have built and paid for at less than real value and still failing to ‘balance the books’. The rebuild of Christchurch slow in the hands of monopolists. Appalling child poverty. A growing gulf between the rich and poor. A veto of extended paid parental leave. Cuts to community education. Charter schools. Private prisons pocketing proceeds of crime. Trade deals negotiated in secret binding the nation, sacrificing sovereignty in pursuit of the mighty dollar and cheap and nasty junk. Transport budgets concentrated on mega motorway projects that don’t stack up on benefit:cost analysis and which suck funds from local roads, public transport, walking and cycling. Resistance to Auckland’s City Rail Link. The ‘supercity’. CCOs which disempower the public and put decisions into the hands of the non-elected. Closure of the Dunedin Hillside railway workshops and outsourcing ‘Kiwi’ rail construction overseas with costly effects….

The list of legacies from the National Government go on.

Are you angry yet? Disappointed? Disgusted in this Government and what it’s doing to GodZone?

Even though the Government has the flimsiest of majorities, it supports an unmitigated fast tracked erosion of Kiwi values. Never before have we had so many submissions to write and protests to attend with so little effect. There are an almost overwhelming number of issues of concern for all New Zealanders, which affect our way of life, our quality of life, our societal values and order, and our sense of nationhood. Threats to all that is great and good about New Zealand.

Many of these policy trends reflect what’s also happening in other parts of the developed world. Because they express a corporate agenda, some of the forces are beyond one government’s control. But I do know we have to change this one. Huge damage has already been done.

The National Government legacy is a call to action. To fail to act, to fail to take all measures to change this government, would be to abrogate a duty not only to past nation building, but also to current generations and the future of our country. We have to talk to our neighbours, our kids, our workmates. We have to get people to vote, left.

The Government claims the trade benefits from the Trans Pacific Partnership may reach $5b. But as manufacturing goes offshore, resulting in increasing joblessness and a hollowing out of the domestic economy, many of us are concerned about the costs.

Existing free trade deals like the ‘celebrated’ agreement with China provide some evidence of the impacts. China now takes the place previously held by Third World countries who were import substitution manufacturing bases for consumer economies. Jobs are lost in developed countries, as low labour and environmental standards in the developing world provide competitive advantage. Off-shore production avoids domestic requirements for quality control, safety, environmental standards and durability and we’re flooded with cheaper, but nastier goods, ultimately destined for the landfill.

Demand generation through planned and technical obsolescence encourages a jobless, debt ridden domestic economy. In a sad way that’s good for consumers, because despite the loss of local manufacturing and jobs, and less real money in circulation, even poor families, with the help of easy credit, can buy the latest plastic toys, clothes, toaster, washing machine or flat screen TV. Free trade is convenient for the consumer because things have never been relatively cheaper, but they’re wicked for the planet.

We can’t guarantee it’s all good for the areas where New Zealand has a current competitive advantage either. With the advent of the China Free Trade deal, we’ve seen insertion of Chinese interests in the complete dairy supply chain for instance. Never mind Chinese consumers buying Fonterra milk, soon they will be able to buy Chinese milk, made in New Zealand. In this case, our lax environmental and labour laws encourage investment in New Zealand farms.

But we also worry about our intellectual and cultural property rights, our Treaty rights, the national interest in Pharmac, in regulating against harmful products, and non-tariff barriers to free trade like labour and environmental protections – inadequate as they already are. Just how much is the Government prepared to trade away, in the interests of trade?

Trade is most free when partners have matching, minimal, domestic laws. So in the interests of free and easy capitalism, agreements legally empower corporations and give them the right to apply pressure to remove trade barriers across member states. Ultimately future laws in member countries face deregulation pressure, otherwise, least regulated economies have competitive advantage. Under the Investor State Disputes process, foreign investors can also sue our Governments if they think lawmakers diminish the investor’s future profits. The tobacco lobby’s legal challenges against plain packaging in Australia, and John Key’s reluctance to further legislation here in advance of the outcome of that case, show that free trade is already affecting the national interest and the exercise of sovereign powers. Given the existing corporate power in setting domestic policy agendas, worse may be yet to come. Limited sovereignty, environmental, social and economic costs – free trade is not really free.

We know this year’s election will be close, and may be ultimately decided, like the last election, by those too apathetic or cynical to vote. The National Party are already maximising dirty tactics to belittle the opposition and perhaps to encourage that sense of apathy and disaffection.
The last General Election had the lowest voter turnout in 120 years. About one million people voted for the National Party, a million voted for other parties, and about a million stayed home and didn’t vote at all. Motivating those non-voters will be important in 2014 – not just for the intrinsic value of civic participation but for the future of New Zealand. Sadly, the inertia of cynicism and apathy may be hard to counter.
Statistics New Zealand recently released its survey into non-voting habits. More than 20% of non-voting survey respondents just didn’t get round to it, forgot, or weren’t interested. 14% couldn’t be bothered voting, 11% couldn’t decide who to vote for, and 7% were put off because they didn’t feel they’d make a difference-‘voting doesn’t really change things’ and the election was (portrayed as) a foregone conclusion. A third of those who didn’t vote were demotivated by a distrust of politicians. 42% of those aged 18-24 didn’t vote. The young, unemployed and/or recent migrants were least likely to vote as disenfranchisement and alienation from the political system created a multiplier effect. This is dismal news for those who treasure the spirit of democracy, and despair of the current government. But no wonder the public are cynical about politics.
Media coverage shows Parliament full of (mainly) white men yelling at each other. It’s all ‘stunts and sound bites’. The National Party successfully encourages cynicism and apathy by dumbing down political discourse and discrediting options for a better New Zealand. The opposition parties’ modest reform agendas to address poverty and inequality and reduce hardships from underemployment, underpayment and the high cost of living, encounter shouting, outright dismissal, and refusal to engage in serious debate from the Government.
We’re told that the economy is good under National and that is was bad under Labour, that tax cuts are fair but the Living Wage, and extended Paid Parental Leave are drains on the hallowed economy. We’re told growth is more important than the environment, while most of us work harder, longer. Most of us know that the real power is held by banks and multi-national corporations, and it would be difficult for any credible party to stand up to Big Oil or Big Money or Big Pharmaceuticals.
While the rest of us still hold onto hope and strive for a better world, and vote accordingly, because non-voters ‘hold the balance of power’, it’s in the National Party’s interests to promote a culture of apathy and cynicism and to hope that almost as many as their voters, don’t vote at all.

With the Japanese fleet illegally hunting whales in the Southern Whale Sanctuary, and apparently in New Zealand territorial waters, there’s just cause for our Government to stand up for our oceans and their inhabitants. But given the condoned mistreatment of our marine environment locally, the Government lacks the moral legitimacy required to speak out about Japanese actions further afield.
At home, seas that were once abundant with life now host only a shadow of their former inhabitants. Whole species are under pressure, and at best our Quota Management System maintains fish stocks to only 20% of their original numbers. That leaves no population resilience or management slack for either future generations’ use or for species viability. We’re fishing like there’s no tomorrow and at this rate, for many species, there probably won’t be.
Our fisheries practices are driving to extinction beautiful species such as Maui’s & Hector’s Dolphins, and New Zealand Sea Lions, which are all now the rarest in the world, as well as sea bird species, because of fisheries by-catch. Regulation is lax, with observers on only a tiny proportion of fishing vessels, and enforcement for by-catch offences weak.
Right wing governments will always favour the interests of the fishing industry over conservation, with maybe a few concessions of a marine reserve here or there, (insufficient without comprehensive oceans management). But the fishing lobby has disproportionate power in the ‘sustainability’ debate which is why our ocean life is being trashed.
The Sea Food Industry is particularly successful in maintaining close relationships with political parties through overlapping interests, as in the case of Peter Goodfellow who is both National Party President and a Director of Sanford Limited. Sanford own almost a quarter of NZ’s Total Allowable Catch under the Quota Management System, and the Goodfellow family own 37% of Sanford. Peter Goodfellow also owns a significant proportion of Sanford in his own right. In other cases election donations to candidates or Parties breed cynicism about the nature of political influence in public policy. Especially when the government ignores scientific evidence in its decision making.
Defence of the seas and the whales who roam in them is left to noble rogue Non-Governmental Organisations such as Sea Shepherd as local states like New Zealand abrogate both responsibility and action. The ‘Last Oceans’ are being stripped of their intrinsic and use values while countries squabble over the crumbs. Incidentally, Sanford Ltd pioneered the Ross Sea tooth fish industry and pursued it to its limits but now support ‘Marine protection’ for part of it as long as other fishing fleets are locked out while their access is retained.
Being a developed island nation, New Zealand could be setting a positive agenda for marine conservation in the South Pacific. But instead, conflicting interests prevent proper decision making. Our country misses the boat with not just international policy, but domestic policy too.

The great Kiwi migration occurs every year. With warm weather, long evenings, summer and Christmas, all over New Zealand we pack up our gear and hit the road. We sit in traffic jams leaving cities and towns and contend with other harried drivers to head to relatives and/or a favourite beach or riverside camping spot.
But as we stop along the journey, amongst all the beauty that is our landscape, we’ll discover one of New Zealand’s dirty little secrets. Almost every lay-by, rest area, picnic spot or beach is littered with the filth and waste of previous passers-by. Very few rest areas have public toilets, but most have toilet waste in the bushes or grass. Very few have rubbish bins, but all are littered with rubbish. How did we ever get a ‘clean green’ reputation when our public spaces are so filled with trash? Why do councils scrimp on this ancillary transport infrastructure that’s so important to the country’s amenity, travellers’ needs and basic hygiene?

Why do travellers shit in the bush?

The issue has challenged local councils, and freedom campers got the blame. The Government imposed, and the Councils applied, rules prohibiting freedom camping in many spots. We’ve heard stories about campers defecating on peoples’ lawns, of visitors sleeping in car parks and using public spaces as toilets. But the freedom camping rules were always going to be fraught – unenforceable, unmanageable, and ill-targeted. To avoid the problem of polluted rest areas, we’d need to prevent all travellers stopping at lay-bys, not just freedom campers. But people do need to stop for a rest, a leg stretch, sometimes to spend the night, and when nature calls that ‘you’ve got to go’; you’ve got to go – and anyone travelling with children knows this can be a pressing imperative, whether there are adequate facilities or not.

It doesn’t justify the rubbish, waste and toilet paper littering those lovely (and sometimes unlovely) spots, but does put the onus back on Councils and roading authorities and us all. Travelling holiday makers can contribute significantly to the economies of towns and villages they pass, so there’s a good return for Councils and local businesses when facilities are provided that encourage these visitors to stop. But it’s also in everybody’s best interests that there are adequate toilets and rubbish bins along the way. At present that’s not the case.

Instead of punishing freedom campers, Councils, communities and Transport Agencies should invest in decent basic toilet services and rubbish collection at roadside spots. Keeping these areas clean will also help prevent them being trashed. There will always be those who flout the rules and disregard basic decency, so rest areas will need maintenance, but most travellers should only appreciate the beauty of our country, and hygienic, tidy lay-bys would help. With decent roadside facilities we can all do our bit to Keep New Zealand Beautiful.

Almost everything we use or own has been extracted from some mine or well. Every form of transport relies heavily on fossil fuels for its construction, and usually, its propulsion. Fossil fuels and extractive industries make modern life possible. Does that mean are we wrong to object to deep sea drilling for oil and minerals proposed all around New Zealand? Are we really hypocrites, ‘rented crowds’ or nutty, for living so deeply in a carbon age but wanting that to change?

Feelings ran deep among the 5,500 of us on West Coast beaches around New Zealand in support of the Oil Seas Free flotilla on a sunny Saturday in November. Everyday Kiwis of all ages and all walks of life stood on those black sands for a whole range of reasons.

Some of us were there because we want a transition to clean energy and thereby a cleaner planet, and the step-up to that challenge could well take place here in New Zealand.

Some of us also object to New Zealand selling out to international mining and oil companies, who take all the wealth, with few dividends (royalties) for this country but all the risk. NZ needs value-added industry that contributes to our own economy and society, not one based on extraction with benefits and jobs all literally offshore. We’re not compelled to adventure further into new mineral and oil extraction, and among the options for economic ‘stimulus’ this one is quick and dirty.

Others contend that the resources being sold off are not this Government’s to sell, but part of the New Zealand inheritance owned by none and/or all equally and across generations, and unalienable by the Crown.

Many of us are concerned about the environmental effects of oil and mineral extraction – from Maui’s dolphins to surf breaks, whole ecosystems and landscapes, right through to climate chaos. We should be in no doubt that continuing our current rate of resource use is unsustainable. We know the Anadarko and New Zealand Inc oil spill response capacity is laughably inadequate. We know risks increase in a laissez faire industrial regime such as ours. To many of us, the environmental risks alone make current proposals untenable.

In sea bed mining and deep sea oil New Zealand is being locked into an unsustainable extractive economy with few real benefits. Ultimately we all need to modify our consumption and travel patterns to make a difference about climate change or the risks and effects of mining or oil drilling. Moving to a less destructive economy will take some transition, but trends, and protests, show many Kiwis are keen to put their words into action.

Christine Rose is a citizen-activist; an environmentalist, a sustainability advocate, an animal rights campaigner and artist.

She has degrees in Political Studies and Philosophy from University of Auckland, and researched Local Government Politics for five years for her PhD.

She served in local and regional government for 15 years from 1995-2010 including time as Deputy Mayor of Rodney District Council, Deputy Chair of the Auckland Regional Council, and Chair of the Auckland Regional Land Transport Strategy.

She is a member and supporter of many community, arts and environmental movements, including Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, Maui’s & Hector’s Dolphins Education/Action, and also WSPA and SAFE.

She’s a Trustee of the Skypath project to provide walking and cycling across the Auckland Harbour Bridge. She is a public transport user and advocate.

Christine is a lover of the outdoors, wilderness and our natural environment. She’s a cyclist, a tramper, camper and kayaker.